The political environment is independent of economic reporting. Why do you think that propaganda would be any less effective with huge ring-bound reports than it would be summary reporting?

Surely it's even easier to hide lies and misdirections inside a mountain of data and concepts which most people don't understand at all.

If people don't understand simple numbers - which empirically they don't - how can it make sense to to suggest they should be trying to understand complicated numbers instead?

But - if there's a tradition of reporting numbers which are at least a little bit useful, rather than not useful at all, you're in with a chance of keeping them informed.