Full of hot air
By Kelly Young

 As the rest of the Newport, R.I. was bar-hopping on the final weekend of summer, I was cemented to the couch of someone else’s summer house, watching newscasts of Hurricane Frances rip through my home in central Florida. After three hurricanes tore through my neighborhood -- and I watched all from afar -- I have become somewhat of an expert in hurricane coverage.

What should be designed to be helpful has turned into info-tainment, and unoriginal info-tainment at that. Footage of communities preparing for a hurricane has become cliché: homeowners loading wood into their SUVs, people stocking up on non-perishables, surfers catching early waves, and evacuees spray-painting quips on their plywood. During the hurricane, the lead-in graphic almost always incorporates palm trees swaying in gale-force wind, never mind that palm trees get whipped around in every summer afternoon thunderstorm. The channels should give viewers something besides the same tired footage.

Throughout the past month of hurricane coverage, all of the networks overly emphasized the position of the eye and sketchy projections of where it might hit. With Frances creeping along at a meager five mph, the location of the eye was about the only thing new to report. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration experts spanked CNN for doing so. About midnight on Sept. 4, the director of the National Hurricane Center reminded the anchor and viewers that where the eye makes landfall is inconsequential when the hurricane is a Category 4 beast the size of Texas. Everything in the state will be battered, eye wall or no.

With all the talk of eye location, there was another way to tell where the networks thought the worst damage would be -- where they put their marquee reporters. The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore is the one to watch. Doing so is not a chore. His pre-hurricane uniform is a black T-shirt stretched tight across his broad chest. Perhaps not coincidentally, Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera also sports a black T-shirt when filing reports. Sunlight gleams off Cantore’s tan, bald head, which...