Move over fake news: Stupidity of TV hurricane coverage revealed in ‘fake weather’ live shot

The latest hilarious reveal of TV news fakery drives home the point that what the public sees on its TV screens is a show – entertainment designed to capture and hold an audience by playing to its fears and passions. President Trump, the master of “reality TV” understands this from the inside, which is why his denunciations of “fake news” have so much credibility with the public while driving crazy the insiders in the medium who recent his betrayal of their trade secrets. Fake news has a fraternal twin brother in fake weather. “If it bleeds, it leads,” is the cliché that all-too accurately describes local TV news. The corollary for weather reporting is” “If it blows, it shows.” Even if the wind doesn’t do the job all on its own, as illustrated in this hilarious video, first picked up by global warming skeptic Anthony Watts’s site Wattsupwiththat:

This is far from the first time a network has been caught faking extreme weather for a lve shot: I am so old that I remember that Dan Rather’s national television career began when he was a local newsman at KHOU-TV and his live shot reporting of Hurricane Carla hitting Houston in 1961 was picked up by CBS News. It’s almost as if he is bringing the fake news/fake weather cycle full circle. I no longer have any patirence for the live shots of TV newsmen and newswomen standing in an area designatied as dangerous and bringing us the "news" that the wind is blowing, the rain is failling, and there are consequences for people and structures. We know that already because it is a "hurricane" and now a "tropical storm." I feel bad n paticular for the rookie correspondents, especially the women, who seem to get a hazing when they move up from lesser jobs to a gig at a national network. They seem to be the onces sent out to get soaked, blown, and used as a rag doll to illustrate the ferocity of nature. It's the old damsel-in-distress game with roots in the ocing image business ad old as The Perils of Pauline.