Hype

It is snowing outside as I write this. Not hard. In fact, we aren’t supposed to get over three inches of accumulation.

But, it is snowing.

I was on the road half an hour ago, and I made the mistake of tuning in the local all-news station to get an idea of the traffic.

“Happy Tuesday to you on this Winter Survival morning. Bitterly cold temperatures combined with heavy snow make for a miserable morning… please, if you don’t have to go out, stay inside this morning. The snow is making conditions dangerous. Allow yourself a lot of extra time. Now, off to Frank for our winter-survival traffic report…”

And so on.

I listened to this while the traffic flow was driving about 5 miles below the posted speeds. No slick spots at all. For crying out loud, I could see the grass on the ground still! It wasn’t a big deal. Nothing catastrophic was happening. It was simply lightly snowing in the northern part of the US. Hype. Pure hype. No substance.

Ironically, they followed up the report of our “bitterly cold morning” (note to the radio station: it is December) with a national report on global warming. Hmmm.

It is February 14. All winter long I've seen my grass blades pop-up through the snow - which didn't start falling until the very end of January. For crying out loud, what is three inches of snow in Michigan in winter? It isn't like we are in Miami!

This reminds me of another hyped story (at least it was hyped locally). The Big 3 automakers posted record earnings at the beginning of this decade. The very next year was the second best financial year in Big 3 history - but the only reports coming out were “earnings plummeted by 8%,” and so on.

There is one major problem with news reporting - not everything is news worthy. Unfortunately, you can’t have a 24 hour news station without news, so news-unworthy stories become “news” and minor inconveniences become a “crisis.”