Prior to hurricane Florence hitting the United States’ atlantic coast, many news reports from several media outlets, including newspapers, television and radio, emphasized the dangers of the storm, which began as a category five hurricane. The iminent disaster was highlighted as a reason for seeking shelter, evacuation and even stocking up on groceries.

It was originally predicted that the Piedmont Triad was going to be hit with over a foot of rain, but a large part of the area was not effected to that degree.

This caused many people to believe that the media does a bad job of sharing news without over exaggerating. The news can scare people to the point where they go out and buy a lot of supplies they would need to survive the predicted bad weather conditions. Some think that the media does that on purpose to make people spend money they do not need to be spending.

The way people listen to the news is up to the viewer. With this hurricane, the news was only informing the viewer on what might happen to prepare them for the worst. Weather, too, is something that can be very unpredictable.

Regardless, this epitomizes the reason for accuracy when reporting to protect the authenticity of today’s journalism, which has stigma of bias being added to a majority of articles and news reports. The general public should look to their prominent news outlets as reliable sources for accurate reporting of current events.

The only reason the news is so detailed is so all the information that is given to them can be reported out.

The media’s job is to inform the community about what is happening in their community and around the world, how they inform us is up to the news outlet.

Reflecting Guilford College’s core Quaker values, the topics and content of Staff Editorials are chosen through consensus of all 13 editors and one faculty adviser of The Guilfordian’s Editorial Board.