Theoretically, if someone linked to you, it's white hat. BUT that no longer happens. Most editorial links are nofollow these days, and even journalists are premeditating their links. A journalist friend of mine told me there is a major business around "editorial" links, especially in tech, it's almost like guest posting on some tech blogs, the stories are submitted by the companies and they get free publicity/links.....
I don't know what Google is thinking, but they made all links into equity. If Google were really open and transparent, they'd ignore link trade, as the market would regulate itself. The reason they don't want link business outside of AdWords is because they don't make money from it. So it's not legitimately a quality concern(the market surely would control that), it's a matter of greed.....nothing but greed.