It Could Happen Tomorrow
28. Aug, 2011 
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Yesterday, a reporter posted on the Fox News blog asking if we really need the National Weather Service and suggested weather forecasts, warnings, etc could be and should be handled by the private sector. This blog post could not have been written at a worse time if you agree with this person (which I don’t). In the following article I will address the reason why the private sector should never be in charge of the things the National Weather Service does.
Hurricane Irene will go down in history. Not because of the destruction that it caused or the loss of life that occurred. Instead, it will go down as one of the most over-hyped storms ever to occur. All of the news agencies are guilty of this – from The Weather Channel to Fox News to CNN and CNBC. They all warned of the catastrophic conditions that would (not could) occur. It’s no coincidence that the level of media attention for this storm had in large part to do with the part of the Country the storm was going to affect – the northeast which is where the majority of the US population lives. But why all the hype?
September 11th was one of the worst and most tragic days in US history. It changed us as Americans. It also changed the media. In my opinion anyhow, this is when the media realized how profitable a tragedy could be. It seems since this day, they have been looking for – almost wishing for the ‘next big tragedy’. They got their wish with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. However, since then we have almost gone through a ‘dry spell’ of catastrophic events – at least until this year with the large number of tornadoes going through large cities and causing enormous damage and tragically many deaths. The bottom line is these media agencies don’t honestly care if people are warned of things (at least to a very large extent they don’t care). They don’t care if what they say or do will save your lives (again, for the most part). No, sadly what they ultimately care about are ratings. Ratings which help them earn money. This is why the private sector can not replace the National Weather Service.
What these news agencies may not realize (or maybe simply don’t care) is what they are doing when they over-hype storms is ‘breeding’ a generation of people who will simply start ignoring warnings and think the media is simply blowing things out of proportion again. The day will come where people will no longer heed the warnings when they should have (something that is already a problem). It could happen tomorrow – and it could have dire consequences.