Part 9/11:
The speaker recounts personal experiences of working in Russia, where despite evidence of widespread hardship and subsistence-level existence in rural areas, the media coverage depicted a thriving middle class and successful reforms. The truth “gets filtered” through the lens of funding and ideological expectation, leading to a distorted perception of foreign realities.
This cognitive dissonance highlights a key issue: media outlets tend to tell the stories their funding sources or ideological alignments favor. Over time, audiences stop questioning the narratives, accepting a version of reality shaped by financial and political interests.