The “Meteo-show” in the newspapers

Abstract. In this work we focus on what may be described as one of the worst journalist practices when dealing with severe weather: the “Meteo-Show”, considered as the more or less extended informative practice whose main objective is to increase the news impact regardless of the veracity and the exactitude of the weather facts. In this work we analysed such practices on newspapers highlighting different journalist resources used in written press when dealing with weather for attracting attention and promoting impact. The growing public interest in weather causes that journalists often focus on this topic. But as it could happen with other issues, mistakes, inaccuracies, sensationalism and exaggerations have also reached meteorology related written news. This wrongdoing is especially present and dangerous when episodes of adverse nature are treated. In this paper we present some keys to identify “Meteo-show” in the context of written press. We analysed some examples from real news articles published in different newspapers, in order to understand the motivation of these practices. Finally we present some conclusions and recommendations to deal with this subject.