I skimmed through this overly long article and I fail to see any foul play there. There are PR people and biased media with their narratives. Is it surprising?

Ms. Asch's experiment demonstrates how incredibly powerful group opinions are. The KGB used these reality-bending effects in its propaganda during the Cold War. The Internet offers completely new possibilities to politicians who are trained in this method. Large user groups can be enticed to reach false conclusions if they feel that these conclusions are validated by everyone else.

In addition to being a former KGB agent, President Putin has also brought many of his former KGB colleagues into the presidential administration. The persistent characterization of the regime in Kiev as fascist; the aggressive accusation that third parties were to blame for shooting down the MH17 passenger jet over eastern Ukraine; the ongoing false claim that Lisa, an ethnic German girl from Russia, was raped by refugees, even when it had already been established that this was not true; the discrediting of critical journalists as US-controlled agents; and, finally, the dissemination of contradictory versions of the shelling of a United Nations aid convoy in Syria – all of these obfuscation attempts follow a pattern that goes back to the Soviet Union. The Donetsk leak now offers proof of how it is being used in eastern Ukraine.

Now I see what honest journalism really is. What an amazing unbiased piece of journalism.