I began to be suspicious of news reporting when I was in high school. As a member of both the Russian and Spanish clubs, we took turns each month with the other language and history clubs to celebrate a holiday, or note some historic event from our country. Once the Russian club's turn fell on the month when the Russian people commemorate the Bolshevik Revolution, so we put a couple of historical posters up in the classroom, and our small group enjoyed some cookies together during lunch break.
The next day, there was a large headline declaring that we were trying to press students into the Communist party. Of all the students at the high school, after studying Russian history for a year, we were probably the least likely to idealize the horrors of the Communist takeover.
But this reality was not what the newspaper "reported". Probably some student had told their parents that we had "celebrated" the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. Their parents had immediately formed all sorts of hysterical mental images. The deep, dark, "hidden truth" was shared with a newspaper
