>>41918
I don't know if this still goes on but some time ago a Hungarian radio channel had comedy afternoons one day per week (and on New Years Eve comedy night). This practice went back far into the communism, they broadcasted political humour, this was an accord with an official policy on behalf of the government: giving people a valve they can let out the steam with.
They also published books with the collected program they aired, satires, monologues ("stand up comedy"), dialogues, songs and poems, etc., and their writers also published books with their works, these could be new ones, or the ones already aired, or ones that were played in theaters. So I probably read this: it was a short monologue, a presentation about code and decode, what the official news said and how it should be read; it was about that oh we all know what they actually mean, we all understand. Sadly I can't tell examples from this, I simply don't remember.
What the comedian said to the audience was truth in it's core (this is why it was funny). Irl people knew what the communist government meant, like "defending the peace" meant raising military spending, or "for the interest of Hungary" meant the interest of the Soviet Union or the interest of the Party. People had the ear for this by the end.
I think people now miss that decoder in their head, when they read something in the news they really believe it, or they really believe it literally, can't fill the gaps, read between the lines anymore. They can't see that when the man in the suit says: "it's global pandemic" he means: "it's time to give me more money".