Storms on Cable News

As a footnote to my post upstream about the film Network, I have to comment on the news and weather organizations and their fight for viewers by scaring them to death.  I confess I saw no more than ten minutes of CNN, MSNBC, HLN, FOX and the Weather Channel, but I can say this:

These reporters and anchorpersons should pop some downers and stop drinking regular coffee.  Whoever pays reporters to spend eight or more hours out in a hurricane should be arrested and committed to an asylum.  The reporters on the beach/street/boardwalk wherever seem to enjoy what they are doing.  I can only imagine that they are paid well for it or perhaps only hope to score career advancement for risking their lives live on TV.

As a matter of fact, it occurred to me today that what this country needs is a human sacrifice of a weather reporter in the hurricane to appease the weather gods and the gods of commercialism and national exceptionalism.  And to appease the Christian God whom we are told is not accepting our prayers for deliverance from disaster.

Cable news seems to exist mainly to catastrophize everything and to be happy only when there is a crisis.  Let me take that back.  We have precious few crises.  They are happy to make every natural and normal thing, big or small, into a crisis about which we must pop another paxil.

Oh how I miss the Canadian Broadcasting System.  Even Public TV and radio lets me down, although they still know how to appear calm in the face of doom.  Cause the world is gonna end and we’re all gonna die terrible deaths and there is nothing we can do to stop it.  And as a matter of fact, yes.  Wait til I tell you what I think of 911.  Partly my views were formed by witnessing a tornado close up in Kentucky in 1994.  More about that later.  Meanwhile, people in the midwest and west coast wonder what else has been and is happening in the world besides this hurricane.