In this episode, I talked with Tanya Lukyanova from The Free Press. Tanya is a video journalist who grew up in Russia and is now living in the United States. She has reported on Russia’s authoritarian decline from her home country and has reported on the war in Israel. Two weeks ago she released a video about a viral story that was dominating headlines related to the war in Israel — the story was about a young Gazan boy who was supposedly murdered in cold blood by the Israeli Defense Forces.

This story, created by Anthony “Tony” Aguilar was given legitimacy by mainstream media like MSNBC, CNN, and even Tucker Carlson. The only problem was that Anthony Aguilar made the story up out of thin air. The supposed murdered child was found weeks later and confirmed alive. Tanya reported on this for The Free Press and revealed that the entire story was blown up out of proportion for propagandistic purposes.

This conversation begins with Tanya discussing her reporting on Russia and her upbringing in Russia. She explains how the country has changed in her lifetime and how Putin is thinking through the war in Ukraine. We also talked about what the government needs to do, if anything, when media outlets are lying on purpose to conjure up paranoia and support for anti-American ideology and enemies. I hope you enjoy!

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Music: "nesting" by Birocratic (http://birocratic.lnk.to/allYL)