[xamuel]

Gosh, thanks. I never cease to be amazed at my own ignorance. So I guess that makes all the rhetoric about "the fourth branch of government" even sillier than I already thought it was. (If journalism were to be a fourth branch, then it ought to have some "checks and balances", but right now it seems to have about as many "checks and balances" as Xerxes the God-King of Persia...)

[Nasrudith]

Well of course it lacks checks and balances - it doesn't have any legislative power. To pretend otherwise is to conflate state power with personal rights. States don't have rights.