Really started to figure things out in the late 1980s.

Confirmation about the MSM came about in the early 1990s.

There's an old documentary video from the 1960's, showing tent cities and protests in Mississippi. I can't find it on UTube, but I've seen it on TV many times - the last time maybe 20 years back. My work took me around the country in the 1990s, and one my customers I worked with was in college in Mississippi in the 1960s. He told me about the MSM showing up with trucks, building a tent city and making signs, setting up film crews, and then going around trying to recruit people to "create a protest". That didn't work, so they brought several buss loads of people in from a couple other states, and created their event. Then it showed up on the evening news.

One thing this guy pointed out to me was that they didn't have enough people for a really big protest in town, so they looped people around behind the cameras and handed them different signs to carry, and if you watch closely, you'll see the same people with different signs. As luck would have it, it was only 3 weeks later that I caught them showing that "historic video", and I watched carefully, and he was right. The last time I saw that video, they cut it short - right before the same people show up again.