Despite all the failings of the press, I am now wondering: is it the least bad we could have?

(I do recognise I'm pattern matching to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds, but I don't say this is the best that could ever be if an all-knowing all-powerful being did it, just the best that could be done in practice by the first primates to cross over the threshold of inventing movable type).

> News is an incredibly bad vehicle for anything involving public responsibility.

In the USA, for sure. But news can be and are informative and helping in other places.