John Morales, the Florida TV meteorologist who went viral after fighting back tears as he warned about the megastorm Hurricane Milton, personifies a little-known fact: Local TV weathercasters are the most trusted figures in American news. Even as the popularity of “the media” has plummeted in recent decades, people still trust their local TV weathercasters. After all, those weathercasters talk their viewers through scary times by providing practical, life-saving information. “People have known me as the just-the-facts, non-alarmist guy,” Morales later said, adding, “I think it really shocked a lot of the people that have known me as a weathercaster for 33 years.”
Given that level of trust, it makes perverse sense that the same liars and haters who vilify immigrants and people of color would eventually come for weathercasters. In September and October, an explosion of disinformation surrounding Hurricanes Helene and Milton fueled a deluge of harassment and even death threats against weathercasters across the US. This was not solely the work of climate deniers. Promoters of “anti-migrant conspiracies, false claims of electoral fraud, and antisemitic discourse…converge on moments of crisis to co-opt the news cycle and launder their positions to a wider or mainstream audience,” a study about the campaign of falsehoods that followed Hurricane Helene explained.
The attacks on weathercasters recycled a key innovation in modern political propaganda—one that began with, and sank, Democrat John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004: Attack your opponent’s strongest point, not their weakest. To blunt Kerry’s appeal as a Vietnam War hero, Republican strategist Karl Rove directed the “Swift Boat” campaign that slandered Kerry as a coward who lied about his battlefield exploits. The story was eventually debunked, but not before millions of Americans heard it and perhaps changed their minds about voting for Kerry.
For champions of fossil fuels, today’s attacks have a strategic logic, because TV weathercasters have emerged as among the most effective mass communicators about the climate crisis. Morales, working with the nonprofit Climate Central, has helped drive this transformation. Twenty years ago, his profession was dominated by climate skeptics; today, the vast majority of US weathercasters accept climate change as a scientific fact, and more and more of them talk about it on the air.
In the aftermaths of Helene and Milton, liars and haters also targeted FEMA workers and the storm’s victims. Those victims have “lost everything, and now they’re trying to figure out ‘How do I apply for help?’” former president Barack Obama said at a campaign rally for Kamala Harris on October 10. Spreading lies that FEMA is there to hurt, not help, is “to deceive [victims] in their most desperate and vulnerable moments,” Obama continued. Then, explicitly addressing “the Republicans out there,” he asked, “When did that become OK?”
Obama didn’t have to supply the answer, it was so obvious: It became OK with the rise of Donald Trump. After all, Trump’s path to the White House began with his lies that the nation’s first Black president was not born in the US, and therefore his presidency was not legitimate. The acquiescence of Republican Party leaders who feared Trump’s hold on a sizable portion of GOP voters meant that Trump’s subsequent lies went unchecked. Just as no leading Republicans called out Trump’s birther lies in 2016, none, with the partial exception of Senator Mitt Romney, have publicly repudiated Trump’s continuing barrage of lies, including his preposterous insistence that he didn’t lose the 2020 election.
Trump’s example has encouraged right-wing extremists, including radio host Alex Jones, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and mega-billionaire Elon Musk, to spread equally noxious lies. Jones, best known for insisting that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, posted a video claiming that the government intentionally aimed Hurricane Helene at North Carolina. In response, Greene posted: “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” Musk falsely asserted that “FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.”
In their separate ways, local TV weathercasters and FEMA workers can be thought of as first responders to the disasters that are only bound to get worse. Weathercasters provide the authoritative information ordinary people need to decide whether to evacuate, if they can; indeed, one reason Milton’s death toll was relatively low is that most people did heed evacuation warnings. For their part, FEMA workers provide the material assistance that victims require immediately after such disasters.
It’s all too easy to imagine, however, that in the minds of Trump and other disinformation peddlers, these first responders belong to “the enemy from within” that Trump has repeatedly threatened to crack down on if he regains the White House. They can be “easily handled,” he told Fox News, “if necessary, by the National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”
Dangerous words for sure, but dangerous words that can be countered by the power of the ballot.
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