The Weather Report

Last night, the local news led with (cue dramatic music and graphics) “The Perfect Storm!” I rolled my eyes and groaned. ‘Holy Shit everybody! It’s going to RAIN tomorrow! And there will be wind, too!” Can’t these freaking people just report things without hyperbole and histrionics? What the hell are they going to do when, say, another midlatitude typhoon plows into the NW coast? They’re going to be completely out of superlatives!

This morning, swarms of “reporters” are zooming around, trying to beat each other to get a photograph of the one tree that has fallen over in someone’s yard, or maybe a car that has broken down along the road, or – media gold – something going on with emergency vehicles that have their pretty red lights flashing! (Woooo! Lookit the purty colors! Woooo-Weeeeee!)

(Breathlessly:) “There’s seven miles of brake lights northbound into downtown Seattle!”  Guess what, you moron!  It is like that EVERY TIME IT RAINS, because Seattlites lose all their driving abilities in the rain!  All the choppers are in the air (from all three local stations), searching for any car accident they can find, and I just looked up to see a brave “reporter” standing in a puddle (Yes! A goddamned puddle!), hand wringing over the possibility of storm drains being choked by leaves. “It’s going to get windier as the morning progresses, so be sure to check in with us again as we track the progress of this storm!”

Ummmm… I think not. The only reason I turned the TV on was to see if there was actually anything important I should know. As in, actual news that has a direct impact on how I decide to plan my day.  The same thing went on in Buffalo, when Irv Weinstein would intone his baritone alliterative warnings about approaching snow: “Coming up next: Canadian air packing a powerful punch approaching!”  Buffalonians would reflexively drop their Genny’s and leap into panicked action to clear the supermarket shelves in two hours flat.  I swear to god – it had to be a conspiracy between the local media and the store owners.

But at least they could actually predict weather in Buffalo.  In all of the places I’ve been in the US, the Pacific Northwest consistently has the WORST weather prediction.  How many times have the local weather “personalities” predicted foul weather for the next day, and it turned out to be sunny and mild? Or vice versa?  The human mind cannot comprehend a number so large.  “Seattle weatherperson” is truly an occupation to seek if you do not want to be held accountable based on your performance.

All of this theater and worthless information is the logical, inevitable outcome of allowing the presentation of news – which should be a public service for the common benefit of our mutual safety and security – to become a profit center. The paragon of this operative model is the illegal actions of Rupert Murdoch’s Daily Fail (hacked email and phone accounts to spy on private citizens) and the presentation of opinions and outright lies as news by his propaganda center, Faux news.

These outlets are successful because they cater to our innate negativity bias, and because they have achieved sufficient wealth to demand changes in legislation that favor their unregulated profiteering (such as rules against concentration of ownership to prevent oligopoly).  The annulment of the equal time provision of the 1934 Telecommunications Act (supplanted by the 1996 Telecommunications Act) paved the way for the hate media which prevents meaningful public discussion of what is truly important to our country, our culture, our collective well-being.