Is the politics of fear spreading?

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

The weather service has always tracked those depressions and CNN has always reported on them. I remember them doing so when I was a kid.

Now people just pay more attention to them and want to hear more about them.

When it comes to tracking I'll grant you the weather service. That's what they do. However in regards to predicting I still argue that politics based on last years storm (fear) colored their predictions for this year.

In researching the original post, I did try and look up some old records on CNN. In years past tropical depressions just off the coast of Africa received little if any coverage and were certainly not listed on the main page off cnn.com until they were much more developed and heading in the right (or is that wrong?) general direction.