It turns out that the original source of the report, the United Kingdom Daily Telegraph newspaper (a frequent critic of wind power) issued a correction two days after it published the March 15 article, but other outlets forwarded the false information along, including Newsweek magazine, which included it in a short wind-bashing piece in its March 20 issue.
The media watchdog group Media Matters has the story in a nice analysis piece, which deconstructs the whale fable along with (1) the misimpression that wind power poses a threat to birds in general and (2) the fabrication that it doesn’t reduce emissions from electricity generation.
One of the whale study’s co-authors, in an e-mail to Media Matters, commented, "No one is saying that there won’t be any potential disturbance from the installation or operation of wind turbines – I personally think that is likely as well at least in terms of temporary responses during construction … [b]ut to suggest that our results indicate marine mammals are stranded by windfarms is just erroneous and bad reporting."
By Tom Gray, www.awea.org/blog/
