“UNTIL THE LION TELLS HIS SIDE OF THE STORY, THE TALE OF THE HUNT WILL ALWAYS GLORIFY THE HUNTER” — AN AFRICAN PROVERB.

Imagine a conflict. Any. All-encompassing. From a mere kerfuffle to a full-blown war. From sibling rivalry to January 2021 storming of the US Capitol and from warring neighbors to the ongoing (at the time of writing) Israel-Palestine flare-up of violence.

Now. Are you someone who doesn’t bat an eyelash while going about their business, or do you, like me, fiercely refuse to bury your head in the sand? Nothing beyond the pale, if the former. However, if the latter, pat comes my answer in the form of another question. How do you keep yourself updated?

For my daily, no wait, hourly fix of news, I turn to a whole host of sources. But time and again I am faced with the situation where, largely due to lack of concrete evidence, I find it increasingly difficult to decide who is right and who is in the wrong. An example is now in order. What, or rather who exacerbated the new round of Israel-Palestine clashes? The region has been so mired in one of the bloodiest histories, the past cannot be discounted in any assumptions in the present or the future. The loss of innocent lives — caught in the crossfire — is unequivocally deplorable.

Unfortunately, the plethora of media firms that peddle half-baked “facts” don’t make sifting through information any easier. I am often forced to take many of the news reports I actively read, hear or watch with a grain of salt. Unsurprisingly, some of the well-known worldwide media conglomerates, possibly due to implicit bias, have diametrically opposite ways of reporting similar incidents from two different corners of the world. Simplifying much ahead. On record, these companies have striven to represent suicide bombing in one part of the world as a terrorist attack and in another part of the world as a fight for freedom. A lot depends on your perspective, I have heard. Meanwhile, certain media firms have been accused of adopting the “look the other way” policy and of “playing down” the seriousness of atrocities. All this has led to debilitation of the already-fragile trust in those organizations besides threatening their veneer of respectability.

Moving on, in this day and age, it is possible for anyone with a phone (needless to add, armed with the knowledge about how to use it) to record an incident, in addition to “create” what never happened. However, how can we check the veracity of claims from before the advent of modern technology? Aside from the history books that have been rewritten and re-edited to fit the narrative, how can we confirm what happened hundreds of years ago or before?

While it may be nearly impossible to ascertain certain facts from the past unless we begin making concerted efforts immediately, there will always remain a few versions of the truth from the now in the future - SD