Accuracy of Wall Street Journal anti-ethanol subsidy story under question

By Jim Lane, Biofuels Digest editor

In New York, the The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial on Christmas Eve which has gained wide currency in republication and quotation around the globe,. including an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily and quotation in Biofuels Digest.

In the editorial, the Journal said: “The uglier realities of corn ethanol are at least becoming more widely recognized, even on the political left. The Environmental Working Group and five other environmental organizations said this week they oppose a bailout because subsidies “for corn-based ethanol have produced unintended, yet potentially catastrophic environmental consequences, with little or no return to taxpayers in energy security [or] protection from global warming.”

The problem? The five other environmental organizations do not appear to have made such a statement. Three other organizations (Friends of the Earth, the Network for New Energy Choices and the Clean Air Task Force) joined the Environmental Working Group in a more limited statement opposing additional subsidies for ethanol.  Upon review of press statements made by each organization, the statement appears to be attributable to the Environmental Working Group alone.

What appears to be a Wall Street Journal editorial error does not change the fact that the four organizations in question strongly oppose ethanol subsidies, and question the environmental benefits of corn-based ethanol.

However, four is not six, and a quote from one is not a quote from all. The Journal editorial appears to have been recklessly rushed.

I believe that no news organization  published more anti-ethanol quotes and comments than Biofuels Digest in 2008 because all sides of the debate over biofuels deserve to be heard. But this WSJ editorial deserves repudiation, and has earned either a correction from the Journal, or some better street journalism to obtain the assent of the organizations to the statements atrributed to them.

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