Yeah, I was going to menion Isvestia! Do you know Russian?
No, I just read about the two news services over the years and read that joke long ago.
That was an old Russian joke that I learned in the late 70s, probably had been around for decades. “There is no izvestia in Pravda, and no pravda in Izvestia. The words mean “news” and “truth”, and the papers were the organs of the Soviet state. I think Pravda was the Party’s paper, but the Party ran everything.
The Russians had a wry sense of humor about their situation, and much of the time, they could get away with little jokes at the government’s expense. At least after Stalin was gone. Reagan used to like to tell them to Gorbachev.