The lack of an Internet in the SW verse makes Imperial patriots make much more sense. Transmissions in the films only seem to work short range, and are prone to interception. Therefore data has to be transferred by courier, which might take hours, on a planetary scale, or days to weeks on an interplanetary scale.

Your reputation for honesty as a courier means everything, because who’s to say that message hasn’t been tampered with? Or that you haven’t played it for someone else?

We know as a fact that the Empire has great propaganda: the Jedi go from guarding peace and justice for thousands of generations to myth in twenty years. In a no-internet universe, the only people who know about Imperial atrocity are the ones planning and conducting atrocity. Leaks can only happen, if they happen at all, given the Emperor’s capacity for prophecy, on a local scale, from one Imperial Deep Throat (Sarlacc Throat?) at a time. Even getting the story planet-wide is going to be a challenge. It’s one of the many ways that the first Death Star was a turning point for the Rebels: destroying Alderaan was something the Empire couldn’t keep secret, and clearly Tarkin didn’t even want to. Even then, given the short window between that and the destruction of the Death Star, it’s possible that the Emperor could have cracked down on the story, leaving everyone to just wonder what had happened. The smart move would have been to quickly spread the story that the Rebellion blew it up somehow, to turn public opinion against them.