A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it

MiB!

it's really the media that will stir up the panic, when a journalist interviews someone in charge, they'll say "the public believes...." without actually asking the public and perpetuate their own truth

Governments keep secrets. That shit just happens.

And the majority of governments are bloated and incompetent. What's your point?

Like Phil Coulson once said:
Did you panic when a giant black hole off the side of LA tried to swallow the world? No you didn't, because you didn't find out.
(Something like that)

That's assuming the government is smarter than us no matter what

whenever people get wind of these secrets everybody flips out, the media blow everything out of proportion and chaos ensues. and we wonder why they don't tell us anything.

The government says something, the media makes it big and scary to sell papers, we all panic.

Touche!

The government should keep secrets. The problem comes in when they keep secrets that don't need to be kept for strategic and military purposes.