Truth is the first casualty

of war and of news collection.

I am late to the blog this morning because I have been trying to explain this to a group who tend to believe anything they read - that group being readers of our state newspaper. I tried commenting on line and the "moderators" did not like what I had to say. I have now sent a letter to the editor. It will depend on which member of staff is looking at what might be published tomorrow whether it gets up or not.

But, let me explain something. My job involves working with individual aid workers. These are people who do not work in a paid capacity for big organisations like the United Nations (where they are funded by their own governments) or Save the Children Fund or any of the many "aid" groups we hear and see on the news. These are people who are often not paid anything at all. They may sometimes have (some of) their expenses met but that is all. If they are being paid then it is someone else's responsibility to help them, not mine.

Yes, these people will often go because they feel passionately about something but what they feel passionate about might surprise others. It will often not be some "noble" cause like "saving the environment" but something much simpler. There will be a dam that needs to be repaired or a channel which needs to be dug or a lake which needs to be cleaned so that people will have a safe water supply. There will be a bridge that needs to be repaired or relocated or altered or strengthened so that a transport route can stay open. There might be a mosque or a temple or another holy site which needs to preserved because it has great significance for the local population. There might be a new medical technique to be taught to a group of doctors or nurses so that lives can be saved. There are many other things which also need to be done and can be done in a limited time frame by an individual who knows what needs to be done and can communicate with the local people. It is a different sort of aid altogether and one which people know little about, about which people do not need to know. It often is not safe to do.

Those people will sometimes send back information which is at odds with the news we get on the major news services.  It is not often they do that because it is generally not safe to do so. Those of us who have remained at home and who are in their loop will get information on their return. Let me give you two examples from current conflict zones.

The first is, inevitably, from Gaza. Someone went in to try and repair something needed for human safety. While he was there another major incident was reported here. Hamas would have it that there were over a hundred people killed or wounded. The IDF would  have us believe a much lower number. The aid worker returned and said there were eleven physical casualties but no deaths. The building which was hit was empty at the time.  None of this makes what happened right or wrong but the story he brought back was very different and, as he was actually there, perhaps a good deal more accurate. He is trained to assess such things.

The second one example is from a conflict zone I will not name but the aid worker was lucky to get out alive. All the work had been done when an opposing group came along with explosives, tied three locals to the structure which had been repaired and blew it up. The aid worker and his local colleague had left the structure about an hour before and gone to look at the other problem he was there to fix. This act of terrorism did not reach any news service.

What we see and hear on news services is possibly no more than a vague approximation of the truth. Journalists may do their best and some take enormous risks to try and get their version of the truth out but it is their version. They have their own sources and their own prejudices just as I have mine. I have to hope mine are the more accurate of the two but that does not make these things any more or less palatable. Truth is a casualty in all of this and we need to recognise that when we read or hear "the news".