What's USA Today's Agenda?

Just weeks after running an anti-ethanol editorial riddled with misleading information and shoddy journalism, USA Today ran an another anti-ethanol piece this week, only this time it was in the form of an "analysis" by its financial news content partner, The Motley Fool. And like its aforementioned editorial, the analysis by The Motley Fool played loose with the facts and contained erroneous information.

Thankfully Media Matters, the organization that took down a pro-Big Oil op-ed in the New York Times in March, is setting the record straight on The Motley Fool's so-called analysis :

"In an April 5 Motley Fool post that was posted on USAToday.com, two of their "energy experts" discussed the viability of ethanol -- which currently comprises about 10 percent of the nation's gasoline supply - as an energy source and concluded that ethanol is overly reliant on government subsidies. Travis Hoium wrote that ethanol "requires government subsidies to exist," and Jason Hall agreed that ethanol is "not cost-competitive without government subsidies.

"But the renewable fuel currently used in our gasoline supply is almost exclusively made from corn, and corn ethanol subsidies no longer exist; they expired at the end of 2011.

"The Motley Fool may have conflated subsidies with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which does not provide a monetary tax break but does require refiners to blend increasing amounts of renewable fuels into the nation's motor fuel supply. However, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), "[fuel] suppliers would probably find it cost-effective to use a roughly 10 percent blend of corn ethanol in gasoline in 2017 even in the absence of the RFS." So even if you (wrongly) considered the RFS to be a "subsidy," The Motley Fool's claim that ethanol needs subsidies to exist simply doesn't hold water."

While it is heartening that organization's like Media Matters aren't letting USA Today get away with its latest attack on ethanol, The Motley Fool's analysis raises more questions. What is USA Today's agenda? Are its editors so vehemently anti-ethanol that they will lower common journalistic standards to attack ethanol?

Granted, the analysis published by The Motley Fool was produced independently of USA Today. But surely the latter's editors have a responsibility in placing certain standards (namely, making sure its factual) when it comes to carrying third party content. Otherwise, where does it stop? Or do facts not matter when it comes to attacking ethanol?