if the government or big media could control the weather, why isn’t it optimized for maximum growth?

If you look at all the graft and externalized costs that the state enables for business owners, I don't think it's a stretch to say that if private businesses were building weather control machines then local governments would probably be giving cushy contracts to local tornado-generating-machine magnates to just do whatever in exchange for a lifted pickup truck or whatever. We do live in a world where the government is currently shooting itself in the dick over and over for private profits while chortling about how owned we all are.

No, the fatal flaw with the idea is that they'd be bragging about all the "jobs" the tornado factories were producing, because even though the world runs on the dumbest graft possible they also can't keep a secret to save their lives and know that no matter how awful the truth is no one will actually care enough to stop them.