An image repeated widely can lose the circumstances that made it accurate.

A picture is true of a particular place at a particular moment, and copying strips that away. After enough repetition it becomes a general statement about a country, a group or a condition, which it was never able to support. Nothing was falsified; the context simply stopped travelling with it.

Before passing an image on, spend a moment finding out when and where it was taken. That single check does more to prevent misunderstanding than any amount of arguing about it afterwards.