Main Stream Media and their Epidemics

The main stream media has been a major irritant to me for quite some time.  One particular thing they do that really gets under my skin is when they take news anomalies and report them as epidemics.  I remember several years ago there were a few shark attacks off the coast of Florida and the news nationwide was proclaiming this a “Shark Epidemic”.  Reporters were sent to Florida and they analyzed the attacks in every way imaginable, scaring people and warning people NOT to go into the ocean.  The whole thing blew over in a week or two when another story came along, but for that period of time we were apparently facing an epidemic unlike anything we’d ever seen.

This is just one little example that sticks out in my mind and I’m sure you all can think of many, many more.  I don’t mean what I write next to generate political discussions, because I want this blog to be politics free (I leave that all on twitter), but I thought this blog post was both interesting and an opportunity to demonstrate how the media goes overboard.   The post is from my favorite meteorologist in the world, Bill Steffen.  I grew up watching Bill Steffen and I just think he is a great guy, an excellent meteorologist, and he puts a lot of interesting facts in his blog.  This post in particular talks about the coldest temperatures ever in my home town of Grand Rapids and across a large part of the US, back in 1899.  It is en vogue in the media to call every weather anomaly we face now days global warming climate change.  I understand that climate change is something measured over a certain period of time, which is exactly my point of contention.  Certain places in the U.S. get a couple bad storms or some cold temperatures and the media and the pundits come out in droves screaming the end of the world.  The 1899 extreme temperatures show another weather anomaly and as we can all attest, the world has not come to an end.  It is just another example of the media being the media.  Scaring people and creating epidemics where there are none.

Check out that blog post and see some of those amazing record lows in the deep south!  I can’t imagine how they handled it when so many of the people I know from the south shiver to death at 50 degrees!