My reading between the lines is that AccuWeather realizes that NOAA and NWS are golden geese which give them very cheap access to high quality data, and that if

My reading between the lines is that AccuWeather realizes that NOAA and NWS are golden geese which give them very cheap access to high quality data, and that if those were privatized, they'd probably have to pay more for that kind of data. You're right that it doesn't read like they care as much about the public's ability to be directly able to access that data; They're just aware that if the taxpayer is funding it, they're going to be demanding some sort of access, and since a lot of that raw data still needs to be 'digested' to make sense to the average person, it's not a big deal if the raw data is publicly available. And anyone that tries to also commercialize it to compete can be crushed by their Superior Accuracy(tm).