There is no "best approach" for incidents with political importance.
First reports always contain major errors. Later reports appear to always reflect official falsehoods intended to protect a pre-conceived narrative. It is very hard to determine what is really happening.
The best we can do is to reverse the narrative and infer the reality of a situation by what is denied. ("Don't believe any rumors until they have been officially denied") That is still a very error-prone technique.
Life is full of uncertainty.
Absolutely true. We have found there is even more uncertainty now, since the Media cannot be trusted to deliver unvarnished information in which to drive our individual decision making.
We have long since entered into Pravda territory, where we have to read between the lines of the government mouthpieces, or even go to foreign press sources to try to find information about events.
Sad but true.