> How does the West counter it? How do we, humble internet users sucked into the melee, keep our heads and distinguish fact from fiction? It’s a profoundly deflating landscape out there at times but equally utterly fascinating.

How does the west counter a massive media campaign designed to discredit foreign news sources by making broad sweeping accusations and slanted reporting to mobilize large scale media and popular reaction in the online space?

Hmm, let me read the several articles from your media campaign designed to discredit foreign news sources by making broad sweeping accusations and slanted reporting to mobilize large scale media and popular reaction in the online space to find out...

perhaps by not thinking in us-vs-them terms but viewing all such organizations as somewhat suspect and determining a personal ethical/philosophical position and developing the ability to discern lies from truth based on the net-sum of available facts and historical understanding of reporting bias and self-interest of the various news sources involved, and using this discernment to evaluate such situations against the aforementioned ethical/philosophical position..

I’m not sure I completely follow the implications in your reply tbh, it seems a little reductionist. Are you disputing that RT is a propaganda arm of the Kremlin? As stated above the Kremlin are quite explicit that this is indeed the case. Your point about us vs them… yes, indeed, thinking like this is indeed unhelpful and perilous, and one would be prudent to avoid it. However, the framing of geopolitics as ‘us vs them’ is concept that people like Mr Putin and his ilk fully leverage, propagate and exploit, it’s a core part of his strategy for the retention of power; Putin very much thinks in terms of “us and them”. The ‘West’ is far far far from a perfect entity/system whatever you want to call it, but the autocratic systems in place in countries like Russia are really incomparable with the freedoms enjoyed in the west.

I don’t quite follow your last sentence, can you elaborate? How could this approach be practically adopted? What check and balances for example?

“perhaps by not thinking in us-vs-them terms but viewing all such organizations as somewhat suspect and determining a personal ethical/philosophical position and developing the ability to discern lies from truth based on the net-sum of available facts and historical understanding of reporting bias and self-interest of the various news sources involved, and using this discernment to evaluate such situations against the aforementioned ethical/philosophical position..”