Pick your prognosticator

As hard as it might be to believe, there was a time when the evening news was a half-hour-long broadcast. The idea of a 24-hour news cycle hadn’t been considered yet. And even if it had been, I am certain the idea would be swiftly shot down for the simple reason there just isn’t enough actual news that it couldn’t be covered in 30 minutes.

Whether national, regional, or local, the news program was generally hosted by a single individual. The news reader — and yes, they were news readers in many cases, not reporters — almost exclusively described things that had actually happened that day.

Occasionally someone would editorialize about a topic. It was easy to recognize this shift from reporting to editorializing because the news reader would specifically introduce the new guest as offering an editorial opinion. There might even be a simple graphic on the screen that read simply “editorial.”

Those days are gone, of course. Not because we’re better or smarter or more capable of offering illuminating insight into the events of the day.

No, the news has expanded into a 24-hour-a-day exposé of whatever scandalous offense might be bugging us at the moment for one simple reason: The producers of these programs learned to monetize them more effectively.

Mo’ money, mo’ content. The content doesn’t have to be good, or accurate, or even true. It just has to fill airtime. Which it does, incessantly.

No longer limited to reporting on what has happened, a considerable percentage of our news reporting today is focused on what will happen in the future. Or may happen. Or should happen.

You might wonder are today’s reporters so much more educated, insightful, and connected than those of the past? Are they able to accurately predict future events?

Well, no. They are not. They are wrong more than they are right. And although you might rightly note their track record is nothing to be proud of and might even lead to the dismissal of the errant ersatz reporters, it does not. Because memories are short. Inaccuracies are quickly forgotten. Outright lies are lost to the fog of the latest unfolding drama.

A prime example of how bloviating about a possible future to the exclusion of reporting on issues of actual importance might be best summed up by the recent election of a certain Congressional representative from the State of New York whose resume now appears to be a near-complete fabrication.

Rinse, repeat, repeat.

Perhaps the least divisive example of this tendency of futurecasting is found in the financial news. Semi-celebrities pronounce their picks of the day, the week, the year. They trumpet the impending rise of this or the imminent collapse of that. Flashy lighting, colorful sets, a small army of stagehands, and a bevy of hair and makeup professionals do their best to make the whole package appear dependable and trustworthy. Leaving grumps like me to ask: Is it?

Did these wizards of Wall Street predict the Enron scandal? No. Did they ferret out Bernie Madoff’s fraudulent activities? No, they did not. Were they first to break the news that Nikola’s video of their revolutionary semi-truck motoring along the highway was actually little more than a massive skateboard rolling down a hill? Uh no, they were late to the party on that one, too.

How about the enormous crypto-currency mess made by Sam Bankman-Fried and his cohorts at the FTX exchange and its apparent partner organization, Alameda Research. Did they catch that early and share the news broadly in an attempt to inform investors? Having the responsibility and means to issue a warning and prevent them from losing their life savings — did they do that? No, of course not.

That would have required actual reporting prowess. Investigative journalism would have been required. Effort would have to be expended. And let’s face it, when you get to hang out with rich, powerful, famous folks in exchange for giving them a softball interview during spots on your show, why rock the boat?

The job is to accurately report what is happening, combined with a respectful estimation of what the future might hold. That’s a tough gig. Few do it well.

Thankfully, there is a cadre of professionals who struggle with these exact challenges on an hourly basis. They perform imperfectly, but well. The information they share is not only of interest to a great many people, but it has the ability to save lives.

Let’s talk about weather reporters, observers, and researchers. Admittedly, they are often wrong. But they generally miss on a small scale. And they don’t hide or pretend they got it right when a look out the window would confirm they didn’t.

Their observations of what is actually happening are invaluable. Their predictions of what might be are a critical component for folks planning to do something or not do something based on the information gathered from these pros. How you use that information is up to you. Having it available and regularly updated is truly a life-saver.

In the wider world, where picnics, and ballgames, and outdoor destination weddings are the focus, it doesn’t matter all that much if the high temperature for the day comes in at 75° when the forecast suggested 72. Take off your sweater or roll up your sleeves and the problem of being a bit too warm has been solved.

In the aviation world however, the difference between a freezing level at the surface and a freezing level a 8,000 feet might be the difference between a Go and a No Go. Similarly, VFR pilots planning on encountering a few clouds at 1,500 feet represents a very different issue than would an overcast layer at the same altitude.

Unlike the news reports and financial predictions on television, the weather reports and forecasts actually matter on a day to day basis. Hourly, even. The fronts, the troughs, the ridges, the high and low pressure systems and, of course, those occasional tropical problems all catch the attention of pilots and dispatchers. As they should.

Equally important are the folks who make those observations and create those forecasts. They’re close to right more often than they’re far off the mark. Which makes flying safer. Which makes everyone who boards an aircraft to fly it or nap along the way that much more confident of a desirable outcome to their flights.

Predicting the future is a tricky business. If I’m going to go down that road, my money is on the people who do it every day, who are graded by their accuracy on an hourly basis, and who win a lot more often than they lose. I’ll take the weather crew over the news and financial dweebs any day.