New Jersey residents should understand that legitimate emergency communications follow a standardized, multi-platform approach. When a state of emergency is truly in effect, the announcement originates from the Governor’s Office and is disseminated through the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management (NJOEM), verified social media accounts with official “checkmarks,” and established news organizations. A single, unsourced image or a vague tweet from an unverified account is rarely the way a government communicates a serious legal declaration. Furthermore, images shared online are frequently stripped of their original timestamps and metadata. A news banner showing “State of Emergency” might have been a legitimate report during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 or a major snowstorm in 2018, yet it can be presented today as if it were happening in the current hour.
Evaluating the credibility of an alert requires asking a few fundamental questions: What specific event triggered this? Is the alert coming from a source with a track record of accountability? Are reputable news outlets such as the Associated Press or local affiliates reporting the same information? In the absence of corroboration, a claim should be viewed with a high degree of skepticism. Professional journalists operate under editorial standards that prioritize accuracy over speed, whereas viral posters are often incentivized by the opposite. Continue reading…
