This past week, the U.S. EPA did as expected and announced it will allow E15 blends for 2007 vehicles and newer. They expect to complete tests on 2001 and newer models in November. The partial approval of E15 is not expected to have any real impact, but is an indicator that the E10 blend wall will be lifted.

EPM's Kris Bevill posted articles this week about the announcement and the reaction to the announcement. There was an entertaining and revealing incident in the Growth Energy press conference following the EPA announcement—the sort of thing that usually doesn't get reported. New York Times reporter, Matthew Wald, revealed his biases and made some surprising statements in the Q&A segment. His basic question was whether this EPA decision will have any real impact, but his impatience was what was notable.

He interrupted the Growth Energy spokesman's answer, saying "If you blend E15 and you can't sell it to half your customers, why on earth ….. why don't you just distribute razor blades to the gasoline station owners? Ask them to, you know, spread a tarp and then go out and slit their throats already? Why would you kiss goodbye most of your customers to sell E15?"

The exchange continued about the availability of E0 and E10, with Wald saying at one point: "You should turn these people in. It's illegal to sell gasoline without an oxygenate in it, and the only oxygenate that is approved is ethanol….I mean, what's the point of having a conference call if you're going to babble about things that don't conform with reality?"

Kris made a point of finding what he wrote after all this, and it was a blog post, "Will the New Gasohol Recipe Sell?" In it he explores the question of retailers' ability to offer higher blends, the cost of adding tanks, and the cost to consumer for the blended fuel versus the expected gas mileage. He's obviously no fan of ethanol, but at least the vitriol expressed in the press control was absent in his blog. The whole episode, however, takes the New York Times down another notch on my list. It is not the grand old lady of solid, unbiased, thorough journalism.

In journalism classes in college, we were taught to keep our opinions out of our reporting. Obviously, in this day of blogs, internet reporting and free-wheeling political discourse, journalism is moving towards more lively writing styles, and trending towards more "analysis," which can lead one into opinions and advocacy. What makes it really hard is that readers then have the responsibility to figure out what is biased information, and what is unbiased. It's not always easy to do. Most readers, for instance, have no contact with folks in the ethanol industry and thus have no one to ask whether this information is true. Few will take the time to research a question for themselves.

The ethanol industry has its work cut out for it to fight the misinformation, unveil the biases, and present balanced, solid information about ethanol. It's bothersome sometimes that ethanol advocates are equally responsible for making outrageous statements about the "enemies" of ethanol. They fall for the temptation to use colorful language that makes for a nice sound bite. However, does it fan the flames rather than foster a reasonable dialogue?