This has been very useful to me since I encountered it on the old sub. Within the last years, war has broken out. War seeds the clouds of formerly clear skies. The droplets of propaganda are now a torrent.
As such, I don't think it completely wise to follow this rule unaltered when states clash. The power, organization, and incentives come together to cloudy any former clarity. Lies, with a multitude of motivations, float freely.
What addendums would you add to this adage in an age of active conflict?
Nobody lies in order to make themselves look bad, but people lie all the time to make themselves look good. So we believe the CIA when they say "we do MKULTRA shit" but not when they say "we spread democracy around the world".
We also believe them about soviet nutrition and Stalin not actually being a dictator
Internal documents will always be true (or at the very least, not propaganda). It's what they tell the external public that you'll have to figure out
They do if they're antisocial, tho.