Plant Given Special Status By Local Media?

Tweet

The front-page headline and story of Sunday’s Janesville Gazette was just another fine misrepresentation in the long history of this newspaper. The headline title itself “Ethanol Fueling A Fight” at first grabs the reader's attention to believe that it’s the alcohol fuel that is drawing the opposition to the nuisance production plant.

The subject of the story is the new United Ethanol plant in Milton, although I’m not too sure about that considering the newspaper did not include the facility's location address. What the newspaper did include were the full names and addresses of the nine household complainants who live near to the nuisance and potential health threat. That part was fairly clear. The newspaper also created an overhead map of the nuisance area and placed numbered buttons for each complainant location corresponding to their identification while merely showing a word-cloud and arrow for the approximate location of the plant. In addition, the newspaper titled the list of complainant names and addresses as “These are the homes of ethanol neighbors who are angry about the plant.”

Besides not offering the mailing address of the plant, the newspaper did not publish the plant manager’s name or address. Nor did the newspaper publish any other names or contact information of the plant's owner, United Ethanol or United Cooperative. Now, I understand that if we only print “North Pole” on an envelope in December, a Santa Claus somewhere just might get it someday, but considering this newspaper has a habit of publicly humiliating private citizens with their name, rank and photo sometimes for minor interactions with authorities, the double standard here is just too much to bear.

The newspaper did quote the spokesperson for United Cooperative several times and gave her name, but the executive capacity and responsibility was obviously non-existent and truth be known, spokespeople generally specialize in pacification only.

The non-compliant ethanol plant could have just as easily been a plastic's factory, a pig farm or a crack-house, and the subject of this article should not have been given the protective status as if to be the wrongfully accused.

The people responsible for business and corporate actions that don’t pass the sniff test or draw public scrutiny must not be allowed to hide behind a faceless entity. And newspapers shouldn’t stretch the actions of complainants into a nuisance.