A Hurricane of Hype

thedailybeast ^ | August 28, 2011 | Howard Kurtz

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

It was raining in Manhattan on Sunday morning, and the dogged correspondents in their brightly colored windbreakers were getting wet.

But the apocalypse that cable television had been trumpeting had failed to materialize. And at 9 a.m., you could almost hear the air come out of the media’s hot-air balloon of constant coverage when Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm. Click here to find out more!

Not everyone was willing to accept this turn of events. When the Weather Channel’s Brian Norcross told MSNBC that forecasters had been expecting the first hurricane to make landfall in New York City since 1893—“and it didn’t happen”—anchor Alex Witt was openly skeptical.

“Really, Brian?” she asked. Hadn’t Irene technically still been a hurricane when it came ashore in New York an hour earlier? “Can’t we still go with that?”

No, Norcross said.

With not much to report on the island of Manhattan, the cable news channels switched to places like Long Beach, Long Island, where such correspondents as NBC’s Al Roker and CNN’s John King delivered their wind-whipped reports. “It looks pretty hurricane-ish to me,” Fox anchor Shep Smith said as reporter Jonathan Hunt, British and breathless, showed a hotel parking lot under a foot and a half of water.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

Hurricane-ish. A new word. Kind of like our economy is experiencing a recovery-ish.

[beaversmom]

And at 9 a.m., you could almost hear the air come out of the media’s hot-air balloon of constant coverage when Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm.

Probably like the same deflating sound when they didn't discover anything juicy in Palin's emails.

[rambo316]

It’s kind of like when they report the temperature at 80 degrees and then they add: but it feels like 90.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

When it’s 80 outside, it feels like 90. When it’s 40 outside, it feels like 30. Just once I’d like them to say, “Today the heat index has been cancelled out by the wind chill. Get the children because today it’s 60 and it really feels like 60!”

[Graybeard58]

Give Obama credit where credit is due. He didn’t stop the hurricane in its tracks but he did slow the winds enough to get it down graded to just a tropical storm.

It would not shock me to hear that reported on the major net works.

[kittymyrib]

“Hurricanish” by Shep Smith, The Worst Reporter Ever, is less ridiculous than his reporting during Katrina that there was canabalism going on in the Super Bowl.

He should have been fired after that, but he must have something big on Roger Ailes.

[DrC]

“He didn’t stop the hurricane in its tracks but he did slow the winds enough to get it down graded to just a tropical storm.”

The “takeaway” from Irene will be that Obama changed what was projected to be a Category 4 disaster into a tropical storm by being “uber-prepared.”

[Bigg Red]

The fact that they now look like fools will not prevent tem from doing this again, however.

[COBOL2Java]

The fact that they now look like fools will not prevent tem from doing this again, however.

No, that would require some humility and a sense of decency. In the same vein, when something *really* dangerous comes, and people ignore them and die because "Oh, there they go again!", you think they'll apologize?

[Bigg Red]

Good points.