The Fourth Estate: A Modern Obituary
If you’ve lived for many decades, you’ve heard your peers bemoaning the unwelcome changes we see in American life: increased traffic, the diversity in crowds, the urban noise, the ever-changing rules and regulations by which we must live. Thomas Friedman, author of an important new book, Thank You for Being Late, addresses some of these concerns resulting from our changing technology. I’d like to address one of my own journalistic concerns resulting from changing technology: the death of the Fourth Estate. Consider this a death notice.
What is the
Fourth Estate? It’s a term devised in Europe in the 16th century to
describe those who wrote the news. Not the dailies and weeklies we know today,
but the writers who unveiled the activities of leaders, both royal and elected,
and kept the tax-paying public aware of governments’ activities. In Europe, the
church was the first estate, nobility the second estate, commoners the third
estate. Following the invention of the printing press in 1462, the fourth
estate slowly developed into the written resources commoners used to keep
abreast of local, and eventually national happenings.
During the
birth of America, one-page broadsheets were vital in bringing the early
colonies together to place their demand: no taxation without representation.
News of the colonists’ demand for freedom from England, the call for settlers
to serve in the army, the derision of King George were all part of our
revolution and the early growth of America’s fourth estate.
As America
grew, the fourth estate was comprised of professional journalists who were
educated to write clear, accurate, and truthful news for publication; colleges
and universities educated reporters and writers according to the standards set
by professional journalists’ organizations. Newspapers published in the
twentieth century held responsibility for sharing true, accurate, and important
news of the day—for example, Watergate. When national television came along,
the same was true for news shared on television.
Unfortunately,
today’s America has lost its fourth estate. Its death occurred very shortly
after the first “citizen journalist” hit the internet.
The rise of
the internet has not eliminated newspapers. You can still read your local and
national newspapers online—for a price, of course. In fact, there are probably
many more sources of information on the internet than used to be printed. The
question is, who wrote that information? Is it accurate? Is it well-written and
without grammatical errors? Was it reviewed by anyone? More importantly, is it
true?
Once the
internet entered our schools and homes and workplaces, and as we learned to use
it for communicating, American ingenuity brought us the concept of “social
media.” Now we can share our ideas in real time with our friends around the
nation and around the world, using applications like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok,
and other platforms that collect our social media addresses and send us
algorithmic ads. Sometimes we just use e-mail, but everyone is more likely to
read what you wrote if it has an eye-catching visual attached, and eye-catching
visuals are found all over the internet (cat meme, anyone?).
So instead
of media being the esteemed fourth estate with an educated cohort sharing
well-researched news of the day, we have a totally new entity: the citizen
journalist. The citizen journalist—who may be not much of a citizen or a
journalist—is able to share ideas—true or not—with online cohorts around the
world. This citizen journalist is no longer sharing complaints with the
neighbors, he or she is sharing them with the world. Remember, for example,
Alex Jones, who loudly proclaimed on radio, TV, and internet that the FBI had
staged the 2016 Sandy Hook tragedy, and that the deaths of 26 elementary students
and teachers did not occur. He was able to convince a large portion of his
online readers to believe this conspiracy theory, and it took a decade to get
him charged, adjudicated, and punished for the lies that he created, the pain
he caused, and the ignorance he shared with the world.
Not everyone
is an Alex Jones. Some internet users are misinformed, mistaken, or unaware.
Some internet users are mentally ill, some are misled, some are greedy to sell
ads along with their false information. For whatever reason, we need to
remember that the internet’s “citizen journalists” are not always reliable.
It’s even clear from recent national elections that other nations will post
false information on the internet to interfere with our political processes.
What will the Fourth Estate become? It won't go away, now that everyone knows how to share an opinion, right or wrong. Perhaps it will fade into "who cares?" by the end of this century. Perhaps it will lead to an even greater divide of citizens in the United States, with our culture becoming further split on lies and truth, right and wrong, values and ethics.
I hope we will continue to ask the important questions: who can I help? who is my leader and why? am I meant to be a leader? how can I make this world a better place?
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