Weather wars

Weather wars, sometimes called TV radar wars or Doppler wars, are a kind of sensationalist journalism primarily concerning weather news. The term is an idiom and does not describe an actual war. The "war" is typified by competing local TV news stations engaging in technological one-upmanship to increase viewership.

News outlets have even been known to concoct footage and endanger public safety themselves to promote their public mission of "notifying their viewers". Even if they are not guilty of fabricating newscasts, some do not bother to check their sources in order to broadcast the story before their competitors. (Jeff Piotrowski, or Service-J as he refers to himself, for example, is an infamous storm chaser with a well-deserved reputation for exaggerated and false reports 1.) As a result, irresponsible newscasters promote a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses for some persons viewing their broadcast. This is especially evident in tornado-prone markets, such as those in the Great Plains.

Most recently, the conflict has escalated to the level of attack ads, notably when WTWO, a television station in Terre Haute, Indiana, attacked WTHI-TV's coverage by name by claiming that WTHI's Doppler radar and staff were inferior to WTWO's. The conflict was later satirized by The Daily Show.

Exploitation of fear by falsified reports from storm spotters have resulted in legal action, and in some U.S. states has been considered as inciting a riot. A bad reverse reaction by the public from too many sensationalized reports would be the possibility of either apathy or ambivalence toward real storm reports.

See also

  • Collective hysteria
  • Damsel in distress syndrome
  • Fad or trend, this article as a type of
  • Herd behavior
  • Hysteria
  • Infotainment, this article depicts a type of
  • Media circus
  • Moral panic

References

See Also

Aerography (meteorology)

Aerography is the production of weather charts. The information is supplied by radiosonde...