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Society needs professional, objective sources of political reporting that don’t rely on advertising. It also needs the Fifth Estate.
Our post on the Fourth Estate and the fate of newspapers made the case that a vibrant, independent Press is vital to our democracy and that we should possibly re-think the current model. We didn’t point out that the Press has had some colossal failures over the past eight years that have undermined our collective confidence in the venerable Fourth Estate. So the Whispered Pearls blog responded.
First, they claimed that we didn’t have a comment section. That must have been a technical problem, perhaps with Internet Explorer, because our comments work fine in Firefox and Safari. We’ll have to get that checked out, as we can’t remember the last time we used IE and don’t have a computer that runs it. They also failed to provide a positive link to our post (as bloggers do), which not only would have made it easier for their readers to click thru, but it would have automatically inserted a pingback in the comments section.
As for the content of the post, Whispered Pearls says,
[W]here has this Fourth Estate been in the last eight years then? Where are the angry epithets about all of the war crimes committed by the current men in power? As our habeus corpus was taken away, where was the outrage of that Fourth Estate? Did it reach to anyone other than the few journalists who knew what it meant? Torture? At Guantanamo and elsewhere? Where was the commentary about that? Global warming, and the corporations that condone it?
And on and on. To those ends, I say, the newpapers’ power to effect change has already transferred hands, in case Mr. Gladwell’s not noticed it. The news that affects people, gets into their system, makes them take political action, is already happening more on Facebook, MySpace and blogs than from reading any newspaper. WE the PEOPLE have become the Fourth Estate.
The first point is that the mainstream news media–the people who are supposed to be working in our interest and holding politicians’ feet to the fire–failed us. But did they really? Does the news media owe us anything? After all, to whom is “the media” actually accountable? Who pays their bills? It’s really about shareholders and advertisers, no? This is why we emphasized the Founding Fathers’ role in tacitly establishing the news media in the First Amendment. We implied that the Framers might have gone further in actually writing the Fourth Estate into the Constitution as a check and balance on the other three, rather than leaving it entirely up to the free market.
The government is prohibited from limiting the Press, but the People have no express right to a Press that actually functions…as they do, for example, with the courts. Given the implied mission of a for-profit Press (generate returns for shareholders), most have not failed over the past eight years. They delivered for their advertisers (see the real estate bubble and consumer debt levels) as well as for their shareholders (until recently). And while for-profit media companies are fine and good, we do feel that our democracy needs a more solid and consistent foundation in its Fourth Estate, one that is less swayed by market forces and outside influences. It probably doesn’t make sense to amend the Constitution at this point, but that shouldn’t be necessary.
We also shouldn’t forget that the Fourth Estate includes thousands of city and state newspapers, many of which provide vital checks on political power at those levels. It’s doubtful that bloggers and citizen journalists can adequately fill the void if those were to disappear.
Let’s assume, though, that the Press does serve the People. Given this assumption, it’s worth considering just how badly it failed us over the past eight years. The Press failed miserably with the run-up to the Iraq war. Most self-respecting journalists acknowledge this. Then again, Congress, the entire executive branch, the judiciary, and the U.S. intelligence community also failed us. It was a wholesale failure by each of the Estates. Lest we forget, the Press failed us with Vietnam initially and with the Japanese internment during World War II. These shouldn’t be viewed as reasons to abandon the Fourth Estate but rather to strengthen and improve it. It may have screwed up Vietnam, but it got Watergate. Likewise, just because the Supreme Court made the wrong decision in Bush v. Gore, it doesn’t mean we should do away with the judicial branch. This is why we couched this discussion in terms of a Fourth Estate of our government. It’s that vital to our democracy.
On the other hand, the Press did an exceptional job during Hurricane Katrina and with Abu Ghraib. In fact, for most of Bush’s second term, the Press has served its theoretical objective of informing the People pretty well. Because that’s really what we expect: reporting of the facts. We expect the Press to inform us about what’s going on with our government so we can make informed judgments and vote accordingly. It is not to make those judgments for us, much less to vote for us. It’s also not the role of the Press to call hearings, prosecute crimes, render laws or executive actions unconstitutional, or to impeach presidents. The Constitution is very clear about these powers, most of which rest with elected officials. And while the election may have been stolen in 2000, America rewarded Bush and Cheney with a second term in 2004. We can’t readily blame the Press for that. In 2008, though, we proved that we’d learned from those mistakes.
The second point from Whispered Pearls is that citizen journalists (the People) can effectively replace the Fourth Estate by way of blogs and social media. Remember that this is the same People who voted Bush and Cheney into office…twice. As a practical matter, though, gathering and reporting the facts about our government is neither easy nor cheap. Regardless of whether the news is published in a broadcast, print, or online form, there is tremendous expense in running a quality news organization. For the most part this is supported by advertising, which is supported by circulation and reach. So the primary incentive and motivation is to sell more papers and increase ratings, which can often be at odds with the theoretical objective of the Fourth Estate. Journalists are more apt to make sacrifices when they answer not to a sacred mission but to a bottom line.
This is why we argue for the BBC and NPR models, where the governemnt mandates and supports an independent Press and where the People also can contribute its support in various ways. We consider this as vital as national defense. It truly amounts to a defense of our Constitution and democracy. Given the wholly ad-driven media, though, it’s clearly been insufficient. This is why we now have the Fifth Estate: citizen journalists and social media.
The Fifth Estate is the People. We’re now equipped with a voice that can actually be heard and felt and distributed. We’re providing a check and balance not only on our government but on the Fourth Estate itself. We the People do have the power, and much of that comes from knowledge. From information. But who ultimately provides that information? It’s the Press.
The majority of news about our government, politicians, and world events is not being gathered and reported through independent publishers and citizen journalists. We don’t have the resources to dispatch reporters to Iraq or Russia, and we don’t have the clout to get interviews with presidents and senators. Most of what the Fifth Estate writes about, especially when it comes to politics, is what the mainstream news has already reported. It’s not to say that what we write is unoriginal or unnecessary. If the Press is doing its job by reporting the facts, then it’s up to us (the Fifth Estate) to interpret and disseminate them. We provide the context. We’re the accelerant. The fuel for the fire. Occasionally, we’re also the source, but that’s not our primary role. It’s rare that a citizen journalist is getting a major political scoop because we just don’t have the resources or access, nor should we be expected to.
When the Fourth Estate and the Fifth Estate get together, though, it’s a beautiful thing. When the Press breaks a story, we make it important. When a citizen journalist captures an incriminating video, the Press gives it the attention it deserves. We’re already seeing that more people are getting their news online than from physical newspapers. A majority of that news still originates with the Fourth Estate, but we’re also seeing that the they’re integrating the Fifth Estate (social media) in so many ways, such as allowing comments, offering RSS feeds, and integrating social news/bookmarking sites.
It’s quite possible that the Fifth Estate will end up saving the Fourth. That by socializing the Press through so many different channels, from Twitter to Digg and Facebook, that the Fourth Estate will emerge stronger and more relevant than it’s ever been. Which would be good for the People, for our Constitution, and for our democracy.
Photo credits: Truth Dig, UDN.com
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1 response so far ↓
1 Niggemeier and the fifth estate « discoursology // Jan 1, 2009 at 4:30 pm
[...] Tags: blog, moral panics, news, niggemeier, politics — discoursology @ 00:24 So, the fifth estate (the People; citizen’s journalism, social media) is to function as a check on the fourth [...]
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