George Will Rips Irene Hype: Journalism 'Shouldn’t Contribute to the Manufacture of Synthetic Hysteria'

By Noel Sheppard, Newsbusters

With Irene downgraded to a tropical storm, it is clear that this weather event has become another example of America's media hyping every potential crisis into a full-blown calamity before the fact.

Observing such was George Will on ABC's "This Week" Sunday who told his fellow panelists, "Whatever else you want to say about journalism, it shouldn’t subtract from the nation’s understanding and it certainly shouldn’t contribute to the manufacture of synthetic hysteria that is so much a part of modern life" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

JAKE TAPPER, HOST: George, you think we’re making too big a deal of all this.

GEORGE WILL: I have a home on South Carolina’s Atlantic Coast. I know that the Atlantic Ocean generates hurricanes, and they can be dangerous and unpredictable. That said, this too must be said: Florence Nightingale said, “Whatever else you can say about hospitals, they shouldn’t make their patients sicker.” And whatever else you want to say about journalism, it shouldn’t subtract from the nation’s understanding and it certainly shouldn’t contribute to the manufacture of synthetic hysteria that is so much a part of modern life. And I think we may have done so with regard to this tropical storm as it now seems to be.