Last week, CNN aired a segment where their correspondent, Clarissa Ward, helped free a man from prison in Syria following the downfall of dictator Bashir Assad.

The man acted as if he had been imprisoned for months and was another victim of Assad’s brutality. However, it soon became apparent he was actually part of the Assad regime and had only been held for a short time because he had supposedly extorted money from his colleagues. By the time this became public knowledge, the man had disappeared into the wind. Whoops.

The man who assassinated the CEO of United Healthcare was first thought to be a former insured who had suffered because of the company. It turned out although he had significant health issues, he was not a UHC customer and he came from a wealthy Baltimore family. He also may have intended to kill other insurance executives. Whoops.

In Gaza in November, there was outrage when a staff member of the World Central Kitchen was killed during an Israeli raid on Hamas operatives. Yet, last week it was revealed that the man killed had taken an active part of the massacre on Israeli civilians in October 2023. Not only that, but WCK then fired 62 employees who were found to have ties to Hamas. Double whoops.

With technology that allows news to be reported almost instantaneously, it’s difficult to determine if what we’re seeing is accurate. In today’s environment, one news source picks up another’s reporting, then this is repeated again and again on social media, and the inaccuracies become embedded in our minds. Meanwhile, by the time the truth comes out, the media have moved on. Or, like in the case of the Syrian prisoner, it’s too late to fix the error.

We need to step back and allow stories to unfold in more detail before jumping to a conclusion when a breaking news banner comes across the screen.

Too often, what we think we see at first is not the full story.

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