I haven’t been watching much weather or news, but I think the weather channel and the mainstream media talk about the heat for ratings mostly, and then some parts of the media emphasize it because of climate change. Now they emphasize heat index or feels like, more than temperature, because it sounds even worse. The high temperatures affect the northern cities more than the Southern, because part of the great migration South starting about 50 years ago was the advent of air conditioning. Up north, there are still lots and lots of houses and apartments with no air conditioning. Some have window air conditioners in a room, but many still don’t. When the weather hits 100 for several days or weeks, the elderly especially are at high risk for heat stroke. When I lived in Michigan for school, and found out a lot of people didn’t have AC my friends would say, “we don’t need it here, it doesn’t get that hot,” and my reply was, “yes it does.” Every year they would forget the heat the prior year. As my friends got older they had more trouble tolerating the heat.
We did have a noticeably hotter end of May and early June here in central Florida. It was definitely not typical. I found out recently it broke some records, I’m not surprised.
In Tennessee, every time there was a lightening storm they cut into our normal programming with local news following the weather. Literally, and hour or two of naps of the weather and call ins from people as the weather system crossed several counties. Really annoyed me, I called the weather station twice in the 8 years I lived there to complain. They said most people like it.
So, during storm and tornado season they talk about the storms and anything that goes with it like flooding and electrical outages. During hurricane season they watch them spin off of the coast of Africa, and now, compared to years past, they make you worry about tropical storms that are weeks away if they are ever coming at all. The Hurricane a couple of years ago, I think it was Irma, the reporting was horrible! They made it sound like the biggest catastrophe to hit Florida. Like the whole state would disappear into the ocean. It was a storm to be taken seriously, but the reporting has evolved in a way that makes everyone more hysterical, especially people living outside of the state the hurricane is aimed at.
Snowfall also has become a national event rather than local.
It’s similar to the swine flu H1N1, remember that? The news made everyone hysterical. There was a concern from the CDC about the new flu so they rushed to make a vaccine, but the reality was it followed a fairly typical flu pattern as they watched it in America, but the news had already made it into the next plague. H1N1 is still hear, it still gets a lot of people sick, some die. It was in our flu vaccine last year in America. The news could hype it up again, but something else caught the attention of the journalists and producers.
The news most definitely can propagate whatever it feels like reporting on, and in these days and times whatever gets them ratings, they will run with for 24 hours or even a week.
Social media influences it all now also, the mainstream media keeps tabs on social media to see what’s trending.
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