Propaganda

Look at the mission statements if some of the current "cyber" military initiatives, very instructive.

Manipulation of facts (spin) is a powerful tool, don't expect any power hungry individual or group (and that definition includes all governments) to stay away from it.

The traditional western antidote to that was an aggressive independent free press, but investigative journalism broke down when newspapers became corporations and started to make more money out of advertising than sales, fear of libel actions put the final nail in the coffin. Highly controversial subjects and "thinking out of the box" became a taboo, pushing the "party line" is the daily dish, western newspapers look more and more like Pravda.