A few days ago there was a flurry of gruesome media coverage of the appalling death in Crimea (Ukraine) of a local Muslim girl who had been a beauty queen, and stoned to death by an enraged boyfriend for breaching Islamic Law.

Only one problem. It wasn't true.

Apparently.

Read RFE/RL's story which has looked at it all in some detail, noting how media reports in different countries fed hungrily on each other's exaggerations and inventions. Much easier to do that than actually go to the trouble of checking and double-checking what actually happened.

It's just so difficult to know what and whom to believe these days.