Journalism, as the first rough draft of history, is evident in the Israeli-Hamas war.

The Oct. 7 slaughter of 1,200 Israelis, including women and children, and the taking of 200 hostages rightly stoked public outrage over the cruelty inflicted by Hamas terrorists.

There is no justification for the massacre of Jewish people, the most in a single day since World War II’s Holocaust imposed by Nazi Germany.

In the aftermath of the Hamas attacks and Israel’s declaration of war against Hamas, social media has been less than successful in preventing and removing unverified posts.

Stories based on eyewitness accounts of survivors and soldiers seem real. Others rely on conjecture by officials. Or they convey innuendo heard on the rubble-strewn streets.

One of the most horrific stories involved the widely circulated report Hamas terrorists beheaded Jewish babies at the Kfar Aza kibbutz along Israel’s southern border with Gaza during the initial attacks.

The world cried for the babies of war. The savagery seemed unbelievable. But maybe it was more imagined than real.

The Israeli news outlet i24NEWS first reported the beheadings, based on interviews with Israeli soldiers. It was not clear, however, that the soldiers had actually viewed decapitated babies.

It didn’t matter. Social media promptly inflamed the story.

An unverified account by a French journalist, who misunderstood the original story, reported 40 babies decapitated. Former Twitter platform X had 44 million impressions within a few hours. Google searches on Hamas and beheaded babies dominated that platform.

Even President Biden mentioned photos of beheaded children at a briefing. The White House later clarified he was referencing news reports and not actual photographic evidence.

Hamas, meanwhile, denied it had beheaded babies at Kfar Aza or anywhere else. It accused Israel of disinformation to gain public support for its siege of Gaza.

Israeli Defense Forces head of search and rescue, Col. Golan Vach, told journalists he had “found one baby, with a head cut.” Yet he did not rule out subsequent findings could confirm beheadings.

The emotive babies report was only one of a cascade of suspect images, audios, posts, memes and war propaganda flooding social media, swaying public opinion with difficult to assess validity.

Among outright false reports:

–Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a critic of current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fleeing the country by showing old video of him at the airport.

–An audio report on WhatsApp had Arab residents of Israel plotting to randomly shoot occupants of motor vehicles with Israeli plates.

–A month-old TikTok video shared on the X platform claimed to show a Hamas terrorist with a kidnapped baby Jewish girl taken to Gaza. The original poster deleted it when notified. It had already been viewed 1.1 million times.

Breaking news from war fronts has always challenged news outlets. The horror happens instantly. Details about exactly what occurred and why can and often do surface later.

Achiya Schatz, director of an Israeli organization that exposes online disinformation and hate speech, said as much when he told the Washington Post this about the Hamas initial attacks:

“No one knows (the extent) of what really happened on the border. It was too big, too fast and too brutal.”

Responsible journalists reporting dangerously important war scenes in the moment do their best to convey reliable information. They accept the responsibility of public trust in their work.

Yet recent studies show the majority of the American public gets its news from social media sites. Regrettably, they are often based more on unverified posts than facts.

Bill Ketter is the senior vice president of news for CNHI. Reach him at wketter@cnhi.com.