Progressive Ponderings: The Fourth Estate
04/27/2007
by Joe Meyer
April 27, 2007
Fourth Estate n – the public press Estate n – social standing or rank, esp. of high order; a social or political class.
The definition of "Fourth Estate" is inadequate in that it doesn't emphasize the high rank it was given in democratic history. Our forefathers treasured its importance enough to enshrine the words "free press" in the First Amendment.
Polls taken in the United States throughout 2005, two years after the invasion of Iraq, indicated that the majority of U.S. citizens continued to believe that 1) ten Iraqis were involved in 9/11 and 2) Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction. This could not have happened without the cooperation of the press. Even though these two fabrications were proven false, many Americans still believe them to be factual. Administrative personnel, especially Cheney, continue to infer and even declare them to be true and the press continues to report this without comment.
Wednesday evening, April 25, public television aired a documentary produced by Bill Moyers entitled "Selling the War." Moyers meticulously walked through the media's lockstep with the administration leading up to and selling the need to go to war. Every major news organization in the United States, except Knight Ridder, bought and sold the administration's fictitious "facts." Under a dictatorship citizens know that "news" is nothing but the party line. But, in a democracy citizens want to believe that the "free" media is not abusing its freedom and that the press is believable. Thus, when "news" is manipulated by a press more interested in its bottom line than respecting its duty to accurately inform the citizenry, the press is just as totalitarian as its counterparts in a tyrannical dictatorship.
The name "Fourth Estate" indicates an independence and influence apart from any other power, and a responsibility and accountability to the nation and its citizens. When its power is purchased in the market as any other commodity, it sacrifices truth for profit. That's where we are today in the U.S. It took the majority of our citizens three to four years (2001-2 to 2004-5) to extract the truth regarding the Iraq invasion and occupation. The citizens have moved beyond official explanations, but the press continues to regurgitate administrative spin as truth ("news").
The Fourth Estate, the majority of which is owned by corporate conglomerates, answers to its immediate power clients, - the advertisers with an agenda different from and often opposed to democracy, stockholders whose agenda is short term profits, and government officials who pave the way to more power through deregulation that allows monopolistic practices. The result is that instead of having an informed citizenry, we have a citizenry indoctrinated by corporate agendas. A further result is a misled citizenry that is the most depoliticized of any democracy in the current world. Evidence includes the low voting rate, the absence of reaction to the government's erosion of citizens' human, civil, and constitutional rights, and the general lack of rebellion and protest
(even a contempt for protest) as a citizen's right and duty.
The current trend in the corporate media world is more consolidation
(more power to fewer), the cutting of investigative staff, and the reliance on corporate-sponsored think tank "experts" to provide us with "news." The same people who maneuvered us into Iraq that resulted in a loss of world respect are still featured prominently by the propaganda "Estate."
A citizen takeover of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is possibly the only way to change this "follow-the-money Estate."