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You said — And it must be a hoax if it’s not on the internet, right?

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I operate on the principle that if something is posted on the Internet, and it’s not verified, then it’s most probably a hoax. That pertains to hard news and factual stuff.

Of course, there’s a lot of “opinion” here and that’s a different story, as opinion doesn’t come in the category of hoax or not, but rather whether it’s reasonable, or supportable or one can draw the conclusions that one is trying to do.

Here we are talking about straight facts and absent any verification, if something *is* on the Internet, and without verification, it’s a hoax or bogus or unverifiable or unverified — until such time that several sources of verification come in.

In this particular case, there was nothing verifying it, until a bit later when a 2007 story link was given — which made it even *more* unverifiable than it was before...

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And then, there is another aspect to “breaking news” on a big story. Almost always on something that *may* be true in the “broad aspect” of the story (like someone was killed, for example), the “details” are almost *always* wrong on the story. It could be half the story wrong, or a quarter of it wrong, but it’s always wrong enough to get the entire gist of the story way off kilter and not be able to understand what is going on. But, as *further verification* starts leaking in, on a breaking news story, you start to get patterns that repeat and certain facts that are verified. Other facts start *dropping out* and disappearing, that may have initially appeared. But, “now” you find that those facts are *no longer repeated* by anyone. They’ve just disappeared completely (because they were never true in the first place). That’s all typical of a breaking news story.

In the “long run” — and when the story is *completed* (assuming that it’s not an “on-going story”), then the details start to “sort out” eventually, in a few days.

But, here, the story is not completed and it’s not over. So, what that means is that there are going to be facts that are missing (basically because it’s an “ongoing operation” and typically officials don’t give all the details for an on-going operation). So, even now, the story is not going to be straight or complete and we won’t know all the details. Knowing all the details won’t happen until the whole thing is over, and people who were there (who may have been captured, but can’t talk now, of course) will be able to talk later, and of course *after* the authorities get done with them.

So, even now, even with so-called “verification” at this point in time, you can’t even count on the story being accurate and you or I having all the necessary details to figure out what happened, what is happening and what is being planned (and of course not for what is being planned). You’re probably not going to get the full details about “what is happening” even right now, because that would probably compromise a rescue operation that may be in progress.

Therefore, even right now, after it’s been all this time since it happened, I don’t think that all the details are correct for the story. It never is. But, I’ll still be watching and listening and reading, trying to “sort it out”...

And, as a last “note” on this and what you said — no, I don’t expect it to be “instant” — in fact, I don’t think even after two or three days it’s reliable news. So, no..., I have the opposite opinion, it can’t be verified properly, until *after* a sufficient amount of time has passed. I would say not until after a few days to a week or more — after any “operations” have ceased and everything is “over”...