It’s harder for governments in nations with a free press, but it still happens.

I’m not sure which ones don’t, tbh. I am giving the benefit of the doubt that there are, indeed a few governments that actually never lie to their people. I can’t think of any of the top of my head, though.

Politicians lie. Politicians are what make up a government. Ergo, governments lie.

Quite honestly, the best way to get to the real numbers of any situation is to aggregate the data from many different sources and compare them.