In that circumstance it wouldn't even be a footnote; nobody would even hear of it, except perhaps as a "conspiracy theory".
Exactly. People can't wrap their minds around the fact that their own country is constantly peddling propaganda. I noticed this after I started travelling around the world working in different countries. Every single country is constantly pushing its own propaganda and they all have some element of truth mixed together with lies. Conspiracy theory is how governments hides aspects of the truth that they don't like.