A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck southern California yesterday, but apparently only Judge Judy and her studio audience were affected. At least that’s what the national media would have you believe. I flipped back and forth among the network morning shows today and saw the same Judge Judy video roughly 23 times.

Now I’m fairly certain people other than low-level fraud artists and occasional rent defaulters felt the quake, but I couldn’t tell from watching Matt Lauer, Robin Roberts and whoever they have on the CBS morning show. All they looped was that silly Judge Judy hysteria.

It got worse, however Not only was the video stale, the writing was too. In the span of less than three minutes, Meredeth Vieira and Matt Lauer both used the line “California is on edge this morning”. Really? The whole state is “on edge”? You asked all 50 million residents? That must have taken some time.

For full disclosure, I used to work in local television news so I can sympathize why they use phrases like that (they’re so commonplace that newsies actually believe them) and footage like the Judge Judy stuff (It’s great video! Loop it!) But I wasn’t watching local news. This crap was occurring on the networks.

And their “in-depth” coverage didn’t get any better. Especially when GMA interviewed an earthquake expert and asked her whether this was a precursor to the big one. I’m no scientist, but if real scientists could actually predict earthquakes don’t you think, Diane Sawyer, that they would have clued in the fine southern California residents to yesterday’s tremor before it happened?

Just sayin’.