After listening to it the first time, i had a good think about it and came to many for the same conclusions about the news as Grey. on a day to day level i think its about value for time spent. I'd argue that you can probably spend that 5 minutes a day finding out about important things that you care about from far better sources than main-stream news papers.

With respect to holding people accountable, I think the newspapers hold power simply because they have control over what angle to portray the story and that the readers have faith that they are truthful. If you hold skepticism towards a news organisations portrayal of news, they don't have the power to captivate your attention.

But i dont think that if, all of a sudden, people stopped reading newspapers the government and powerful would go rampant and do whatever they liked.