Just an ancillary point: this highlights that free access to group messaging apps makes it much harder than before to suppress facts about what has happened somewhere. Especially if there's video. The Iran regime of 1990 would have had a much easier time keeping this mistake under wraps.
I think the whole "fake news" and related propaganda strategies we see in the West are what happens when people in power try to adapt to this new reality, by attacking at the weak spots of the new information infrastructure.
Yes. Rather than attempt to suppress it in the West, we'd see a lot of conflicting reports, allegations of fake news, unrelated smear attempts, questioning of loyalties, and attempts to arrest whistleblowers.
For flight 655, while they never admitted guilt, they did settle paying the victim's families "ex-gratia" a non-negligible sum. While it is not the same as directly admitting you are responible, espcecially to the victims, for most intents and purposes that counts as an admition in my books.
Throwing the word "murder" about like this is an abuse of language. Nobody, not even the Iranians, ever suggested that the crew of the USS Vincennes intended to kill civilians. The crew appears to have exercised piss-poor diligence, but it's universally recognized that they thought they were firing on a military aircraft.
I think the whole "fake news" and related propaganda strategies we see in the West are what happens when people in power try to adapt to this new reality, by attacking at the weak spots of the new information infrastructure.