There’s a newsgroup that just about everyone who’s in the television news reads daily called “Shoptalk” which is as old as the Internet. They have a host website called TVspy. Today they asked their own readers this question:
Was Hurricane Irene Overhyped?
By Andrew Gauthier on August 29, 2011 11:58 AM
Hurricane Irene dominated the airwaves over the weekend as many stations along the East Coast provided wall-to-wall coverage of the storm as it moved through the area. Since the hurricane proved to be less catastrophic than many had anticipated, we want to know what you think about how local stations handled the storm–leave your thoughts in the poll below…
=============================================================
In the Telegraph, they sure seem to think so, this from today’s newspaper:
Perfect Storm Of Hype:
The Hurricane Irene Apocalypse That Never Was
Toby Harnden, The Daily Telegraph, 28 August 2011
The images summed up Hurricane Irene – the media and the United States federal government trying to live up to their own doom-laden warnings and predictions while a sizeable number of ordinary Americans just carried on as normal and even made gentle fun of all the fuss. The truth is that the dire warning beforehand suited both politicians and journalists. Irene became a huge story because it was where the media lived. For politicians, Irene was a chance to either make amends or appear in control. The White House sent out 25 Irene emails to the press on Saturday alone.
My thoughts on the Irene event are here. You can take the poll yourself at the TVspy website here, since the poll is open for anyone to participate.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
In New Jersey one of my sisters had her house flooded 8 miles from Manhattan. Everything in the basement was ruined. boiler, washer, dryer, air conditioners. Her first floor too, TV, radios, furniture. Everything! My other sister lost power and it won’t be back for a week.
Multiply that by hundreds of thousands in NJ, upstate NY, PA, VT, etc.
Don’t tell me it was hype!
We had a bad one …Ike…that destroyed a condominium I owned and was occupied by my disabled son-in law. Hurricanes are nothing to fool with. When one is coming into the gulf, Carol and I get ready to head out if it aims for us. We have done that twice in recent years. My first wife and I fled to Austin to avoid Geraldo or whatever the G was ten or twelve years ago. Foolish to take chances when mother nature is on the warpath.
The initial hype about South Carolina was a bit much.
Onion Imitates life here:
Scientists Trace Heat Wave To Massive Star At Center Of Solar System
August 8, 2011 | ISSUE 47•32
According to scientists, the large star could be described as a tremendous ball of energy.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/scientists-trace-heat-wave-to-massive-star-at-cent,21088/
“PASADENA, CA—Groundbreaking new findings announced Monday suggest the record-setting heat wave plaguing much of the United States may be due to radiation emitted from an enormous star located in the center of the solar system.
Scientists believe the star, which they have named G2V65, may in fact be the same bright yellow orb seen arcing over the sky day after day, and given its extreme heat and proximity to Earth, it is likely not only to have caused the heat wave, but to be responsible for every warm day in human history.
“Our measurements indicate the massive amount of energy this thing gives off is able to travel 93 million miles and reach our planet is as little as eight and a half minutes,” said Professor Mitch Kivens, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. “While we can’t see them, we’re fairly certain these infrared rays strike Earth’s surface, become trapped by the atmosphere, and just heat everything up like a great big oven.”……”
:<))
Talk of Irene sucked all media oxygen out of all other stories, in particular international stories such as Libya and Syria. I heard quite a few people complain about this, so I’d say, yes it was over-hyped, particularly after it was obvious it would not maintain cat 3 or even cat 2 conditions..
Although I’m a fan of some Fox News shows, I’m not a fan of its decision to cover Irene non-stop all weekend. Unless you were right in its path and didn’t know how to get news from the Internet, it was just a huge waste of airtime. The coverage itself was sensationalist to the point of being silly, and today’s efforts to walk back their decisions was lame. It’s shameful when politicians at all levels of government can prey upon the fears of citizens and the news media fails to point out when they might be serving their own interests more than the public’s.
REPLY: I agree, Fox was just as OTT as the rest – Anthony
Weather girl surprises reporter with her forecast.
A hurricane loses power as it moves into colder waters. If it had hit Georgia, Irene would have probably have been notable enough to go into the retired names pile (remember, Ike was only a Cat-2). However, it went far enough north to just not be a problem.
The absolute stupidity of the on-the-scene, on the other hand is ridiculous. The number one way people get killed in Tropical Storms is that they go down to the beach to look at the waves, get caught in one, and then get washed out to sea. The media is just encouraging this sort of idiotic nonsense by their own reporters.
I’m almost attempted to give the media a pass on this one. They were, after all, responding in their usual fashion to the official predictions of the forecasters. As Anthony noted elsewhere, while the forecast of Irene’s track was quite good, the wind speed predictions were flawed. Who knows if the mainstream media would have behaved differently if the dire weather predictions (and subsequent evacuations and other government actions based on those flawed predictions) were closer to what actually occurred.
It’s the aftermath that is more amusing. Obama still thinks Irene is a threat even though it’s not a hurricane any longer and storms do not have a reverse gear.
Here in UK the BBC Radio news on Saturday morning were talking about Irene saying that 2,000,000 people along the east coast were going to be evacuated. Gloomberg had ordered all public transport to grind to a halt, and we were told to expect huge damage to NYC. The BBC is the mouthpiece for AGW and loves to exaggerate weather events that are triggered by heat and downplaying those triggered by cold.
This whole AGW is turning into a series of real life fairy tales, we have the Emperors New Clothes, where the majority of the general public wonder what Gore and co are banging on about,. We can see that sea levels aren’t rising, that the weather is not hotter, that storms are on average no worse than they were 40 years ago. Chicken Licken goes without saying, but the real potential tragedy is the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Two or three doom laden warnings about hurricanes, where there is no real threat and the next one ignored could lead to tragedy. Just had a little smile to myself, I thought of Al Gore as Humpty Dumpty LOL!!
I guess it is damned if you do and damned if you don’t. However, I did enjoy all the reporters doing their best imitation of Dan Rather in Galveston?
Actually, through the weekend I kept flipping over to CNN and a few other stations for pure entertainment. Not to belittle the areas that really did get pounded, because there were some and with tragic results, but for the most part it wasn’t a lot different than the thunderstorms that wash through this area all summer. In fact, this year we even had a fatality in Calgary when someone was overtaken by a small flood and stuck under a vehicle, where he drowned.
Meanwhile, reporters standing in the best open space they could find, braving the onslaught of wind and rain, squinting into the camera lights, describing in breathless detail how it felt, watching the occasional bit of siding or roofing material flying past, showing trees that had fallen in the wind or other relatively normal damage… it was enteraining to watch and a bit pathetic.
I say it’s definitely a lot of crying “Wolf”. Whatever would happen if a Cat4 or 5 really DID hit the same areas? Probably a lot of people would be out endangering themselves, thinking “Oh, it’ll be like Irene”… and hey, there’s some doofus in brand new rain gear outside, why can’t I be?
After the beating Bush took on Katrina, no potential disaster will ever go unhyped by politicians or the news. There was substantial flooding in a number of areas, the coast was just lucky the tidal surge and winds didn’t hit just right as they did with Katrina. Other weather conditions conspired to cut the lets out from under the storm as well, so it weakened pretty quicky.
When dealing with millions of people and a hurricane, better safe than sorry is a pretty good bet.
.
>>>JMS
You see, the biblical prediction of Armageddon was TRUE!!! You have seen the testimony here, with your very own eyes – a washer and dryer were destroyed during the storm!!
Praise the Lord (or not, as the case may be)……
/sarc
.
>>>Ralph,
My sister won’t be able to live in her house for months. Maybe it might even be condemned but thanks for caring. Just FYI, lack of empathy is the sign of psychopathy.
Just how do you “overhype” the potential for a major hurricane to make landfall in NYC?
And the fact that “TV media” – which is constantly derided at WUWT as being completely untrustworthy (i.e., doesn’t fit with Anthony’s agenda) – is asking whether Irene was overhyped proves that Irene was overhyped.
And if you needed any more proof, well, there’s an online poll.
REPLY: “Just how do you “overhype” the potential for a major hurricane to make landfall in NYC?” Well if you are Bill McKibben, you simply open your mouth and speak. In the media, wall to wall coverage with nothing to cover and goofy liveshots is the way. I worked in television for over 20 years, I know hype and how they do it, and I’ve had many an argument with producers over the value of such things. One time I got chewed out for disagreeing with a news anchor live on air that what we had that day was a “freak storm”. She asked ahead of time if it was accurate to say “freak storm” and I said no, and they used it anyway. Idiots. The weekend was full of hype like that.
– Anthony
The BBC, both radio and TV, overhyped it. I think they were hoping for a New Orleans type disaster that they could blame on “climate change”, since they blame everything else out of the ordinary on “climate change”.
Oh yea, Krugman has a big scary AGW piece in the NYT quoting the “97 percent of all climate scientists agree” number. That quote has more lives than Felix the Cat. Assuming he wrote it when he was still under the assumption NYC would be swept away in Day After Tormorrow like convulsions.
In the battle for ratings, viewers and individual advancement, it’s easy to see networks and reporters get wound up in a game of one-upmanship, particularly with several days lead-in. Weather reporters aren’t really reporters anyway and are regarded as a nice piece of living room furniture, but they love the focus and attention like anybody else and they had it for a few days to make the most of it. They lost me on the day the storm was tracking north from east of Florida.
Funny video of a weather reporter at the Daily Bayonet
http://dailybayonet.com/?p=8944
Hudson says:
August 29, 2011 at 10:28 am
that was the silver lining around our somewhat irritating dark cloud. we lost all electric power… along with it the TV. I am very thankful. I got my several days’ worth of sleep this weekend.
And let’s not forget Pat Michael’s evidence that it was “overhyped.”
Now if it had “coughed up” significantly more than 8 bodies,it might be a different matter entirely.
[snip – This is in poor taste to put a list of victims by full names, we get your point without making families have these names spewed all over the net simply because you don’t like Pat Michaels and are too much of a coward to put your own full name to posts- Yes he made a gaffe, then corrected it, now move on. – Anthony]
[snip – Way off topic – politics not media – Anthony]
In addition, some of the NHC’s Advisories seemed worded to avoid suggesting that non-core wind speeds were less than hurricane strength and that the core was disintegrating.
Over-reactions by politicians, especially warmists like Bloomberg, also played a part in encouraging media alarmism.