The severe drought affecting the Midwest this year has caused the latest corn projections to be the lowest since 1995.
With such a small corn crop, the government mandates that make some of
that corn be used for ethanol make even less sense, and will raise
prices even further.
The drought has been a big news story for the network morning and evening show in the past six months, earning 55 stories about facets of the drought including struggling farmers, predictions of increased food prices and coverage of wildfires. That figure did not include weather reports that also often mentioned drought.
But out of those 55 stories on ABC, CBS and NBC, ethanol from corn was rarely mentioned -- just 13 percent of the time (7 out of 55), and not all of those explained the ethanol mandates. Government mandates for ethanol have been pushing corn (and other grain) prices up for years now. But an explanation of government mandates that require billions of gallons of corn ethanol be produced each year was very difficult to find on the networks.
ABC’s “Good Morning America” passed up a perfect opportunity to examine the sense of the ethanol mandate on Aug. 18 when correspondent John Schriffen discussed the drought and how it has pushed gas prices even higher. Schriffen said, “So what’s caused the unpleasant end-of-summer surprise? Refinery outages of the Midwest, rising crude oil costs, and rising ethanol costs due to drought.”
Read more: http://www.mrc.org/articles/networks-ignore-ethanol-mandates-most-coverage-historic-drought
The drought has been a big news story for the network morning and evening show in the past six months, earning 55 stories about facets of the drought including struggling farmers, predictions of increased food prices and coverage of wildfires. That figure did not include weather reports that also often mentioned drought.
But out of those 55 stories on ABC, CBS and NBC, ethanol from corn was rarely mentioned -- just 13 percent of the time (7 out of 55), and not all of those explained the ethanol mandates. Government mandates for ethanol have been pushing corn (and other grain) prices up for years now. But an explanation of government mandates that require billions of gallons of corn ethanol be produced each year was very difficult to find on the networks.
ABC’s “Good Morning America” passed up a perfect opportunity to examine the sense of the ethanol mandate on Aug. 18 when correspondent John Schriffen discussed the drought and how it has pushed gas prices even higher. Schriffen said, “So what’s caused the unpleasant end-of-summer surprise? Refinery outages of the Midwest, rising crude oil costs, and rising ethanol costs due to drought.”
Read more: http://www.mrc.org/articles/networks-ignore-ethanol-mandates-most-coverage-historic-drought
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