Ask A Russian

Neither me nor my friends don't beleive Russian media.

There is a quite popular russian principle: listen to the government's plans and prepare to exaclty the opposite.

Me and all my friends don't believe in kremlin's propaganda. I think younger generation has more awareness. I mean, I spent my whole life living under Putin's regime, I see how awful it is and I don't like it.

I can't fathom watching Russian media today. It generally helps that i don't watch TV and don't read the news. Since like 5 years ago I developed a brain filter against all native media, memes, Habr, groups, education. All this coloring rarely makes sense to me, so I'm really just swimming in English-speaking Internet.

Despite all that, I find good people on Russian Mastodon: no propaganda, no ***-licking, no bullying. Can't care much for Russian media though, even with Meduza and alike existing behind VPN... I'm trying my best to avoid federal zombification channels and VK. Even though it's unrelated to media, I'll just take this opportunity and say that there are a lot of dumb people on VK and a lot of war propaganda. 🆘

Moved to the US when I was a kid, but I have clear memories of watching channel 1 every day with grandma. This answer probably will apply to people 40 and over. For the record I'm not that old yet!

Back then the Internet wasn't really a thing, so TV was really the only source of news. And even through it was understood that most of the things you heard on the news were lies, it was hard to say what exactly was lies and what was news. So, you ended up believing some things, and then you believe more and more... It's easy to slip into this. And I'm sure things haven't really changed. At least from what I've seen.

If Russian state media tell the truth, that happens only because a broken clock is right twice a day.