Weather Porn

Isn’t it astonishing the amount of coverage a “weather event” receives these days? All the networks and cable news channels in NYC invested heavily in televising Hurricane Irene (HI), with the 3 major networks bringing in their veteran anchors for the weekend coverage. Part of the broadcasters’ strategy was early on to call HI “devastating,” “major” and “historic” and to stick to this gigantism even when the hurricane became just a tropical storm by the time it reached NYC.

Even now as I write, at 7:15 AM, the highest recorded wind today in Central Park is 25 mph, not even a gale. But the broadcasters are committed to full coverage for the rest of the day. Of course, with the cancellation of golf tournaments, baseball & football games, and car races, they need substitute programming to attract watchers.

Storm chasers are performing live from the eye of HI, reporters are out in local spots to highlight the damage from wind and flooding, deaths (10 so far) are solemnly recounted, and the focus is on the most ghastly scenes, so some footage is repeated over and over to titillate the TV audience with what is now called “weather porn.” But no context is provided for the sort of routine storm damage done so far by HI. No channel is showing comparative footage of the immense wall of water that only last March obliterated several towns near Fukushima, Japan, causing damage to a nuclear plant that is still threatening the area.

How about our own disaster in New Orleans caused in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina? That was truly “devastating,” “major,” and “historic.” We in the Northeast will soon recover. New Orleans today has a population about one-third smaller than before HK hit. Katrina, which caused almost 2,000 deaths, remains the costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States (Wikipedia).

Have a nice day. J