Talking of phoney news stories, after Hurricane Floyd in 1999 visited my neighborhood, a film crew from the local NBC station came out and shot some video of trees across the street from my home. They had been torn up and broken down from Fran, which came through in 1996. The video made the national network news the next day, while a voice in the background was describing all the terrible destruction that the storm had done to our area.
Although Floyd was a nasty storm and caused considerable flooding to mostly inland areas of NC, no one ever knew that the trees shown on the video were damaged 3 years previously. And, anyone could clearly see that the trees in the video were even showing signs of decay and rot.
Since then, I really don't pay much attention to news reports when it comes to the weather. And, I always keep in mind that TV news industry is really in the business of selling commercial time.