Then during the Serbian/Croatia conflict, as US’s involvement was getting heavier, we were getting very one-sided reports as to what was happening over there on the news.
But I was getting emails from a woman, who was anonymous for her safety, that lived on the frontlines of the conflict, and she emailed her daily reports to a group of about 1000 people of which I was one.
It was one-way communication; but I read as soldiers came into her city, the various things they did, things that happened to her family and herself…
..and the reports started dwindling until one day there were no further reports from her.
I never found out what happened and why she’d stopped.
At the time, the claims from the USA were that there were these large pits of first 1000 then 10000 then 100,000 people buried in this massive ethnic cleansing campaign.
and not to take away from the horrors of conflict, the numbers were overblown and it was a very ugly conflict.
I was lucky to be in a position to hear an alternative point of view while it was happening.
But now, within a day – same day, I can watch citizens put their training to use immediately, share photos of themselves with cats, see a tik-tok just before they perish in a bombing.
It is far far more immediate and amazing. There’s still lying as there was before but it’s more spread out and with a bit of reasoning, possible to discern exaggerations and fables from things that are likely true with a bit of care. [or maybe not but I think so]