Let’s stipulate right off the bat that cable news coverage of land-falling hurricanes is an abomination that P.T. Barnum would be proud of. That’s a no-brainer. We can leave it to people like Howard Kurtz to knock that softball right out of the park.

But the cable nets don’t dictate the forecasts of the National Hurricane Center or the National Weather Service, and state and local officials don’t rely on the cable nets when making disaster preparation decisions. So the logical leap made by critics that cable TV hype leads to overreaction by local governments is both wrong and frankly dangerous. Read More