“But the second is to suppress original material and salient facts.”
The Russians were helped in this by the fact that the post-Soviet area of the world is largely unknown to the MSM today. They do not cover it, so they don’t know the context. They are not aware of preceding developments, they don’t think through the implications. They don’t even know what questions to ask and whom. Some examples:

It took NYT three or four days to finally do a piece on the US diplomacy in the run-up to the war, although the question ‘What did Condi say to Sakashvili when she was there just one month ago?’ should have been on everyone’s minds, regardless of their sympathies.

The Russian peacekeepers, which they of course aren’t. Even calling them that entails accepting the Russian narrative.

After meeting with the Russians Sarkozy declared that Moscow has a right to protect the Russians living beyond its borders, a remark that was picked up by most Eastern European papers and went unnoticed in Western papers. Neither their editors, nor their readers, nor Sarkozy are aware what this idea means for Russia’s neighbors. Or, for that matter, for Hungary’s neighbors. (Sarko would be surprised if Algeria and Tunisia picked up on it and demanded the sovereignty for the French banlieus).

All this context is largely unknown to most editors. Their context is Iraq. So when the Russian trolls come, they have an easier job talking to people dependent on news sources for whom the Russian-Georgian quarrel history started on August 9.