Killarney,

It must be nice to be better than other people, not to be taken in by media, even Russia's: "To claim people are too smart to be fooled by the media is arrogant conceit."

You said it ! So perhaps you can be right sometimes :)

So are there NATO troops in south-western Russia, or Russian troops in eastern Ukraine ? Are there NATO planes flying over Russia's air-space, or Russian planes flying over the air-space of the countries of the Baltic and Scandinavia ? Russian submarines in Swedish bays ? That's all lies, is it ?

Yes, I love that paranoid cop-out - " claiming the existence of evidence where there is none (and claiming no evidence where evidence DOES exist)".

Back to topic: of course, people can be taken in by lies, you and me included, but how much more would that be so with a tightly-controlled media like in Russia ? Where Putin owns RT ?

Surely the antidote for media bias is more media, not less ? Of course it can be biased, twisted, slanted towards what its proprietors want people to think. Ergo, Putin's RT. It will probably always be so, but that's why we always have to be vigilant, to be sceptical, to open up stories and issues to detailed criticism and analysis wherever possible. And that's one of the roles of 'good' media, to provoke discussion or at least private reflection. Bilger's take is in the opposite direction, given that he also thinks that he is above it all, free from bias, clear-eyed and able to discern underlying interests of media-owners.

Except his own biases and interests, of course.

Joe