Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Melanie Warner of the New York Times Edition)

Matthew Yglesias wonders why the Washington Post's Melanie Warner cannot explain why cane suger is more expensive than high-fructose corn syrup:

Corn Syrup | TPMCafe: Matthew Yglesias: The New York Times says high-fructose corn syrup isn't actually any worse for you than standard sugar. Sadly, for a very long article on the subject it doesn't say anything about the relevant trade policies. Manufacturers are "able to buy the sweetener at prices 20 percent to 70 percent less than those of sugar" but why is it so cheap? Well, in large part it's because we've made it so hard to import sugar from Latin America where there's lots of land well-suited to sugar cultivation. The current policy is bad for the environment in Florida, bad for development south of the border, and even costs jobs in America, but it's good for folks who grow corn and for producers of the insidious beet sugar...

Here's Melanie Warner:

A Sweetener With a Bad Rap - New York Times: Melanie Warner: Manufacturers had always been able to buy the sweetener at prices 20 percent to 70 percent less than those of sugar. In a 1983 article in Fortune magazine, one beverage analyst estimated that by switching to high-fructose corn syrup, Coca-Cola gained a cost advantage over Pepsi and its bottlers of $70 million a year. A year later, Pepsi followed in Coke's footsteps and also began using the sweetener. Mr. Critser argued that the cost savings allowed soft-drink companies to create larger sizes that were only marginally more expensive, thus propelling people to drink more soda...

There is no excuse--this is a business section story, after all.