Bachmann began backing away from her comments on Sunday when speaking with WCCO’s Esme Murphy. She said that people “misread” her spoken comments on Matthews talk show.

On Monday evening, Politico published a letter from Bachmann asserting that what bloggers and the media  heard her say on Matthews’ show wasn’t actually what she said. “I never questioned Barack Obama’s patriotism,” she said. “That’s false,” says Minnesota Public Radio’s Bob Collins. “Saying one is ‘concerned’ that he may hold anti-American views is a question. It may not be an answer, but it is a question.”

Collins did give her some credit. Bachmann wrote, “I never asked for some House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunt into my colleagues in Congress.” Collins says, “True, she asked the media to do it.”

Well-known bloggers were less cautious. Markos Moulitsas, founder of the progressive blog DailyKos.com, posted portions of her letter along with the Hardball video, concluding, “She’s blatantly lying to Politico.”

On Tuesday, the Star Tribune taped a video with Bachmann saying that “a trap was laid and I stepped into it” and that she didn’t know what Chris Matthews show was about. She said Chris Matthews brought up the term “anti-American” not her. (She used the term ten times during the interview.)

When pressed on her statement about Obama, she said, “I should not have said that. I regret saying that.” The Minneapolis paper did not ask Bachmann about her call for a media investigation of “pro-America or anti-America views” of Congress.

The St. Cloud Times editorial board caught up with Bachmann on Tuesday and asked her what she meant when she spoke of “pro-American or anti-American views” of members of Congress. She said, “What I meant to say is that I am not going to say if members are pro-American or anti-American. The media can go ahead and make their own inquiry. I’m not going to make that inquiry.”

Bachmann continues to deflect questions asking whether she believes members of Congress hold such views. She says it’s a “gross distortion” to suggest she called for such an investigation.

The full St. Cloud Times video is below.

Reached by email, he says he’s looking forward to the challenge. “It is an exciting and scary time to be in journalism as the industry continues to shift, remake itself and adjust the way it delivers news,” he wrote. “The basics are still the same. We need good reporters and good reporters who have high standards. SPJ will provide support toward those goals.” Steve Dornfeld, former associate editorial page editor of the Pioneer Press, served as SPJ president in 1982-1983. Aeikens, an eight-year member of the organization’s national board, will be sworn in at the annual SPJ convention in Atlanta next September.

Eric Black ponders the numbers, looking at long-term trends and the effect of “Limbaughism” in the mid-1990s. But it’s the widening polarity of politics that has him concerned. “I’ve believed that the so-called polarization of U.S. politics was a bit overstated, because most people aren’t political enough to be polarized. But Pew’s section on the growing partisan divide has me wondering,” he writes. “I do worry though that the blogosphere makes it ever-easier for citizens to spend their reading time having their preconceptions constantly reinforced.”

Brodkorb’s “inner psychic”: In a recent Bloghouse column, the Star Tribune’s Tim O’Brien gives a rundown of bloggers’ takes on the politics of the 35W collapse. Just after Minnesota Democrats Exposed blogger Michael Brodkorb fisked (or was it “cluster-fisked“?) the St. Cloud Times’ Larry Schumacher, he gets similar treatment from O’Brien: “Brodkorb even channeled his inner psychic to read the mind of Rep. Melissa Hortman,” he writes. “Hortman told the Denver Post that ‘you wonder if this bridge was built to withstand the massive heat we have had this summer.’ In Brodkorb’s partisan translator, that meant she was claiming that global warming brought down the bridge. There’s blogging, and there’s fiction writing — you be the judge.” (Brodkorb’s rebuttal here.)

more insideStrib CFO on “proprietary” PiPress spreadsheets: The Star Tribune’s recently departed CFO Mike Riggs is highlighted in Editor & Publisher’s latest round of excerpts from the Par Ridder trial early this summer. Riggs, who was named as a defendant in the trial, testified that Ridder gave him spreadsheets filled with proprietary information from the Pioneer Press. E&P found it interesting that Riggs didn’t indicate any of the data would be used to get an unfair advantage over the competition, but he reiterated that Ridder told him to make sure information on and about the PiPress spreadsheets didn’t “get out.” The judge’s decision on the case is expected in the next few weeks.

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