It seems that more and more these days, the "Fourth Estate" has become the "Fifth Column".
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Valid statement but the press has always sought to be the tail that wags the dog.  Over 100 years ago what is now called the Mainstream Media was shaping rather than reporting upon public opinion:
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When Hearst Artist Frederic Remington, cabled from Cuba in 1897 that "there will be no war," William Randolph Hearst cabled back: "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."