Sergei Lavrov, Vladimir Putin’s Foreign Minister, has taken on the role of a modern-day Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s infamous Minister of Propaganda, parroting the barbaric lies of his boss.

Last week, Lavrov doubled-down on the outrageous claim the mass murder of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, were actually perpetrated by the Ukrainians themselves, while simultaneously saying the murders didn’t happen at all. “Fake news,” said Lavrov, coopting the phrase made famous by former President Trump. Lavrov even stole a page from lunatic webcaster Alex Jones, claiming the photographs and videos of bodies in the streets and in mass graves were staged using “crisis actors”, the same cruel nonsense Jones spewed after the Sandy Hook massacre.

“Dead children? What dead children?”

It’s impossible to know how much of this the Russian people actually believe. Conditioned by history to doubt everything their leaders say, the Russian people have also learned not to question their government publicly.

Or privately.

Unless they’re interested in living in Siberia.

“Pravda”, the official Communist Party newspaper, is also the Russian word for “Truth”, proving Lenin and Stalin had at least a sense of irony, if not humor. To this day, when Pravda says it’s going to be sunny, Russians grab their umbrellas.

Still, Putin’s hold on the media in Russia is near absolute, so many millions undoubtedly buy the big lie they’re being fed. As Orville Wright said a hundred years ago, “The truth cannot withstand a lie aided by continual propaganda.”

But who today decides what’s the “truth?”

In the immediate aftermath of Richard Nixon’s resignation, the two most trusted institutions in America were the United States Congress and the news media. How things have changed in 50-years! Today, more Americans trust the bots calling to sell extended car warrantees than congress or the news media.

Congressional investigations are dismissed as either partisan witch hunts — regardless of the evidence uncovered — or as coverups themselves, dog-and-pony shows orchestrated to hide the truth from the American people. For many millions of Americans, the news media is not credible, rather partisans either Left or Right shilling for their ideological or financial backers. While there can be, even should be, differences of opinion, there can’t be two truths, one for Liberals and another for Conservatives.

And this brings us to Hunter Biden’s laptop.

On October 14th, 2020, the New York Post ran a blockbuster story claiming a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had been turned over to the FBI after being abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. This story appeared just weeks from the Trump/Biden election, and Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had given the Post a copy of the hard drive, which caused many to doubt its legitimacy.

Emails on the hard drive call into question not only Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukrainian and Chinese energy companies, but even President Biden’s involvement.

For the record, I have no idea if anything illegal was done by anyone named Biden, but I do know if a laptop belonging to Donald Trump Jr. containing similar eyebrow-raising emails had been found, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and all the television networks would have made it the lede story for weeks. Instead, the major news organizations either spiked the story or labored to discredit the New York Post, including Twitter and Facebook that actually blocked users from linking articles from the Post.

Now, 17-months later, the New York Times and Washington Post have confirmed that the laptop was in fact Hunter Biden’s, and the emails appear to be legitimate, not part of a Russian “disinformation campaign” as indicated by 51 top Obama Administration security experts as well as Congressman Adam Schiff.

By squashing the laptop story, the news media put their thumbs on the scales of the 2020 election and gave more reasons for people already distrustful of the media to distrust journalism as a profession. This not only erodes the pool of the “informed electorate”, it allows demagogues of all stripes to peddle big lies and condition “We the People” to doubt everything, a cynicism fatal to democracy.

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Meanwhile, former President Trump and his acolytes in Congress, the Senate and conservative media, continue to dismiss damning evidence collected by the January 6th Committee that shows the 45th President of the United States assembled a mob in Washington  on the day the Electoral College votes were to be certified, whipped them into a frenzy with his stolen election lie, and then sent them to the Capitol to stop a vital Constitutional obligation, a process never before interfered with in our 246 year history.

The “truth shall set us free” only as long as we know what’s true. In the so-called Information Age, that is becoming harder than ever. Political parties, news organizations, and those of us who use social media have a moral and patriotic obligation to use our voices honestly, to admit errors when we make them, and not flinch when the news is bad for our “side.”

Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sundays. He can be reached at: [email protected].