MEDIA OVERSELLS ANOTHER HURRICANE

Covering weather events like Florence has evolved from a cottage industry way back in the 1980s to the full-blown media events they are now. Having reported that Florence was going to be a 100 year Cat 5 storm, the Weather Channel, et. al, are now left with a fairly pedestrian CAT1 flooding event. Nevertheless, having pre-located their resources in the path of the storm, the Weather Channel is now giving the storm the full coverage they planned for the CAT 5 event that didn’t bother to show up.

Overselling hurricanes is part of the shock doctrine. Yes, if you are in it, it sucks, and a CAT 1 storm can destroy your home and kill you just as thoroughly as a CAT 5, but the weather channel get huge rating bumps whenever a storm rolls in, so you can blame them if they put on a show. The news is show business, after all.

Part of the real news story isn’t the strength of any individual storm because storms are fickle and fond of disappointing meteorologists. The real news story is the number and frequency of the storms that are stacked up, one after another, waiting for their turns at bat, which may or may not be the result of climate change, depending on whom you ask.

Don’t ask Donald Trump. While Trump bleats about variances in the reporting of the fatalities in Puerto Rico after Maria, the fact remains that Puerto Rico is still in a…