Not defending the media machine, but when the national weather service issues a warning with blizzard and historic for New York City, then it's game on for the blizzardmobile. They ran with the NWS warning. I understand it's really bad in the New England states where it actually is a blizzard, but the hysteria wouldn't have happened at all if NYC wasn't invovled in the first warnings along with the words they used. The fail all started with the National Weather Service.
How is this a fail? Again, it's weather, it's a fluid situation. If it were not NYC that was affected by a 25-50 miles change in path, then this would have been a pretty accurate forecast. But the line of delination became nassau / suffolk border (12-15 or less west, 15-25+ east).
It's not like the storm didnt materialize, but rather it missed the largest city by a fairly slim margin and places still got wrecked, including locales within the NY market.