The Fourth Estate

1652 Words7 Pages
The Fourth Estate is “unquestionably the most grave, noticeable and formidable phenomenon of our times”(Reeve, 1855:470). Throughout time, the definition of the Fourth Estate has changed and evolved. Now, in contemporary society, the biggest media firms have become more than just local storytellers, but now enormous transnational enterprises; entertainment is now a dominant part of news, not just information. John Thadeus Delane argues that the purpose of the Fourth Estate is “the duty of the press is to speak, of the statesman to be silent, we a bound to tell the truth as we find it without fear of consequences…and to consign them to judgements of the world”(Delane, 1852) However, it can be argued that today’s media fails to fulfill this role in speaking the truth and having public interest at heart. There are many theories concerning the validity of the Fourth Estate as an ideal. This essay will draw close attention to a George Boyce’s theory used by Julianne Schultz in, The Fourth Estate: A Changing Doctrine; “The paradox of the Fourth Estate, with its head in politics and its feet in commerce can however, only be understood if its is appreciated that the whole idea of the Fourth Estate was a myth”. (Boyce, 1978) When analysing a media source, it is important to seek out the purposes of the story, to either inform or entertain its audience. In examining the effectiveness of The Australian’s article on Barry O’Farrell ‘NSW Coalition won't rule out budget cuts after claiming to find 'black hole', I will apply this approach in conjunction with Boyce’s view of whether or not the Fourth Estate is an impossible ideal. The initial research I did for this assessment was analysing the lecture notes from Week Six. The issues that caught my attention were synonymous of this way of thinking; “Is the media simply a business or does the media provide a public service
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