Hurricane Milton leaves path of destruction across Florida, at least 23 dead

Question

According to CBS News, it says that at least 23 people died from Hurricane Milton. I fact-checked this by visiting other articles claiming deaths from the storm. They all have various numbers ranging from 8 to 23 within a day. I think it can be hard to have the exact number since the storm hit so recently.

Answer 1

I went to cbs, nbc, the independent, fox weather, cnn, and aol, and the particular article listed has the most people dead out of all of them. They all had at least 8 confirmed, but the average was closer to 15 confirmed. fox weather had the second most claiming the death toll at 22, however they did not say where this number came from. With how recent of a event the hurricane was it is hard to label this as false but the cbs article hasn't been updated in 3 days(oct 11), whereas the fox weather article was updated monday(oct 14) afternoon. With that being said I am deeming this article exaggerated/misleading due to the fact that it is 3 days old, and the fact that further down in the article it say 16 people dead in florida versus the claim of 23 dead.

Answer 2

Based on the title of the article, I, and other readers can assume that this article is about the death toll caused by Hurricane Milton. Before even reading this article I had heard things about Hurricane Milton from multiple news sources including NBC, CNN, USA Today and AP News, and this article is from CBS, so I knew that this was relevant information. That being said, I needed to make sure that this specific article was telling the truth on the events and death toll from Hurricane Milton, so I did more research into the source, author and facts that the article states. CBS is a very credible website that has been around for decades, and is one of the biggest news outlets ever. But, just because it is big and old doesn't mean that it is 100% right, according to other news outlets the death toll might not be as big as CBS claims. After some research other outlets are estimating an average of 15 people dead, not a number as high as 23. Since this is the main point of the article and the headline, I would conclude that while it is true that many people have died during Hurricane Milton, CBS is exaggerating the truth.