And many lies are what people want to believe.

If Russia's not involved in the Donbas, then it's a local issue. If Germans don't want to get involved, it lets them off the hook: If Russia's actively invading, then there's more pressure to support "international" law since it's what they've placed their confidence in to defend them against aggression. If it's an entirely internal issue, then it's internal and it would be inappropriate to intervene.

That means Germans have a bias, a conflict of interests. If they assume that Russian media are as fact-based in ideals if not always in practice as Western sources, then they can posit a kind of equivalency and pick what they want. If they think Russian media continues the century-long history of waging agitprop campaigns against its own population as well as external populations, then there's a big difference between the sources.

Substitute any group you want for "Germans."

A very good one would be "Russian-speakers outside of Russia." They pattern like Russians and have nearly absolute confidence that what Russian-language TV and radio tells them is the absolute truth. Why? Because the media tell them they're wronged, victimized, but great and proud and ultimately superior. And it keeps them entertained. Nobody wants to be told that what they thought of as good was actually evil--look at the long road rewriting American history has had to travel with how interventions in S./Central America are perceived. Russians still almost entirely believe that they did only good in their former colonies and territories and deeply resent being told otherwise. It's like finding a group of Americans who know about the US interventions in Mexico and resent that these aren't interpreted as the acts of love and mercy that they truly were, and are shocked and humiliated to find that they've been misrepresented as self-serving acts by America for corporate interests. Then realizing that the group of Americans you've found is 95% or more of the entire American population.

Rather the opposite, when you overdo it or become too overt you get noticed and your usefulness declines. The law of diminishing returns applies. We are aready well into that phase, which is why they are whining about how ineffective our present effort is. People stop listening, and you can't make them.

But you will always wind up in that place if you make a habit of lying, the Russians will too, they did before.

It is quite true that both sides lie their asses off, maybe Iceland doesn't much, but some are much better at than others, and one thing the guys that are good at it do is minimize their distortion of the facts.

Or as I put it: Bullshit will only take you so far.

Those stations the story mentions are Russian domestic stations. Just like Fox, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, etc, are US domestic news stations. Is Bloomberg suggesting that the USA should set up the equivalent of Fox, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, etc, all in Russian just so Russia can get more news in Russian from American sources than they can get from Russian sources?

I guess if the US can't bomb Russia into submission, they'll go ahead and spend the USA into submission instead...

None of them has the credibility that even Fox has.

They are useful for News, at times, but other times they just spew bullshit like it was golden. It all depends. What I recall is that in the usual news story of theirs I post there would be a few nuggets of useful information embedded in a whole bunch of slanted crap.

But that is true most places and sometimes the nuggets were pretty good.

You have to remember that news these days is about 80% infotainment, because the business model is all advertising, they never get enough from subscriptions and street sales. It's all about attracting "views".

And unless they have their own sources, as many if not most do not these days, it's all second hand, which is one reason you see many versions of the same story pop up at once on your news feed.