Hence my opening phrase:

Assuming the story is not fabricated”

A while back some of us discussed that a comm often works better when the news story accompanying the comm is actually true or at least largely true. That way the news story is more difficult to debunk and discard, which would leave the comm conspicuously unaccompanied. The secrecy of the comm is not worth risking on a bunk story. Outer space stories are difficult to debunk because most of us rely on the word of the people with the powerful telescopes, but cracks can still appear:

There are exceptions along the lines of “the medium is the message”, such as when the act of lying is the comm itself and the news story is supposed to be easily debunked.