Fourth Estate

Etymology

Oxford English Dictionary attributes ("without confirmation") the origin of the term to Edmund Burke, who may have used it in a British parliamentary debate of 19–20 February 1771, on the opening-up of press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain. Historian Thomas Carlyle reported the phrase in his account of the night's proceedings, published in 1840, attributing it to Burke.

The press

|chapter-url = http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/european/TheFrenchRevolution/chap39.html |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20000122041013/http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/european/TheFrenchRevolution/chap39.html |archive-date = 22 January 2000 |access-date = 12 November 2009 Carlyle, however, may have mistaken his attribution: Thomas Macknight, writing in 1858, observes that Burke was merely a teller at the "illustrious nativity of the Fourth Estate". If Burke is excluded, other candidates for coining the term are Henry Brougham speaking in Parliament in 1823 or 1824 and Thomas Macaulay in an essay of 1828 reviewing Hallam's Constitutional History: "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm." In 1821, William Hazlitt applied the term to an individual journalist, William Cobbett, and the phrase soon became well established.

In 1891, Oscar Wilde wrote:

In United States English, the phrase "fourth estate" is contrasted with the "fourth branch of government", a term that originated because no direct equivalents to the estates of the realm exist in the United States. The "fourth estate" is used to emphasize the independence of the press, while the "fourth branch" suggests that the press is not independent of the government.

The networked Fourth Estate

Yochai Benkler, author of the 2006 book The Wealth of Networks, described the "Networked Fourth Estate" in a May 2011 paper published in the Harvard Civil Liberties Review. He explains the growth of non-traditional journalistic media on the Internet and how it affects the traditional press using WikiLeaks as an example. When Benkler was asked to testify in the United States vs. PFC Bradley E. Manning trial, in his statement to the morning 10 July 2013 session of the trial he described the Networked Fourth Estate as the set of practices, organizing models, and technologies that are associated with the free press and provide a public check on the branches of government.

It differs from the traditional press and the traditional fourth estate in that it has a diverse set of actors instead of a small number of major presses. These actors include small for-profit media organizations, non-profit media organizations, academic centers, and distributed networks of individuals participating in the media process with the larger traditional organizations.

Alternative meanings

Lawyers

In 1580 Michel de Montaigne proposed that governments should hold in check a fourth estate of lawyers selling justice to the rich and denying it to rightful litigants who do not bribe their way to a verdict:

What is more barbarous than to see a nation [...] where justice is lawfully denied him, that hath not wherewithall to pay for it; and that this merchandize hath so great credit, that in a politicall government there should be set up a fourth estate [tr. ] of Lawyers, breathsellers and pettifoggers [...].}}

Michel de Montaigne, in the translation by John Florio, 1603.

The proletariat

An early citation for this is Henry Fielding in The Covent Garden Journal (1752):

In response to violence against a textile worker demonstration in Fourmies, France on May Day 1891, Georges Clemenceau said in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies:

Traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola saw the Fourth Estate as the final point of his historical cycle theory, the regression of the castes:

British queens consort

In a parliamentary debate of 1789 Thomas Powys, 1st Baron Lilford, MP, demanded of minister William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham that he should not allow powers of regency to "a fourth estate: the queen". This was reported by Burke, who, as noted above, went on to use the phrase with the meaning of "press".

U.S. Department of Defense

Main article: Fourth Estate (Department of Defense)

In the United States government's Department of Defense, the "fourth estate" (also called the "back office") refers to 28 agencies that do not fall under the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Examples include the Defense Technology Security Administration, Defense Technical Information Center, and Defense Information Systems Agency.

Fiction

In his novel The Fourth Estate, Jeffrey Archer wrote: "In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estates General'. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, commoners." The book is fiction based on the lives of two real-life press barons, Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch.

Notes

References

References

1. "fourth estate". Random House.
2. Castells, Manuel. ''[[The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture#The_Rise_of_the_Network_Society. The Rise of the Network Society]].'' Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
3. Shirky, Clay. ''Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.'' Penguin Books, 2008.
4. Bruns, Axel. ''Gatewatching and News Curation: Collected Essays on Journalism and Digital Communication.'' Peter Lang Publishing, 2015.
5. {{OED. estate 7b
6. Carlyle, Thomas. (19 May 1840). "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History. Six Lectures. Reported with emendations and additions". James Fraser.
7. "Origins – The Parliamentary Press Gallery". Parliamentary Press Gallery.
8. (1958). "An Encyclopædia of Parliament". [[Cassell (publisher).
9. Esmein (1911)
10. Macknight, Thomas. (1858). "History of the life and times of Edmund Burke". Chapman and Hall.
11. Ross, Charles. (9 June 1855). "Replies to Minor Queries". [[William Thoms]].
12. Macaulay, Thomas. (September 1828). "Hallam's constitutional history". Longmans.
13. Hazlitt, William. (1835). "Character of W. Cobbett M. P". J Watson.
14. (1680). "The Complete Works of Michael de Montaigne". J Templeman.
15. Wilde, Oscar. (February 1891). "The Soul of Man under Socialism". [[Fortnightly Review]].
16. Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon. ''Unreliable Sources'' (New York, NY: Lyle Stuart, 1990) {{ISBN. 0-8184-0521-X
17. Benkler, Yochai. (2011). "Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate". Harv. CR-CLL Rev..
18. (10 July 2013). "US vs Bradley Manning, Volume 17 July 10, 2013 Afternoon Session". Freedom of the Press Foundation: Transcripts from Bradley Manning's Trial.
19. "In The Matter Of: United States vs. PFC Bradley E. Manning - Unofficial Draft-07/10/13 Afternoon Session".
20. (10 July 2013). "US vs Bradley Manning, Volume 17 July 10, 2013 Morning Session". Freedom of the Press Foundation: Transcripts from Bradley Manning's Trial.
21. (1603). "The Essays of Montaigne done into English". [[David Nutt (publisher).
22. "The works of Montaigne". John Templeman.
23. Fielding, Henry. (13 June 1752). "O ye wicked rascallions". Covent Garden Journal.
24. Paulicelli, Eugenia. (2001). "The Cambridge companion to modern Italian culture". Cambridge University Press.
25. Pugliese, Stanislao G.. (1999). "Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile". Harvard University Press.
26. Tuchman, Barbara. (1962). "The Proud Tower". Macmillan Publishing Company.
27. (1792). "Dodsley's Annual Register for 1789". J Dodsley.
28. (2018-04-17). "House proposal would eliminate DISA, 6 other agencies to save money in DoD".
29. Gould, Joe. (2018-07-26). "The fate of DISA, and other org chart changes in the new defense policy bill".
30. (17 May 2009). "The changing face of the Fourth Estate". Eastern Panorama.