Media: The Fourth Estate

Estates of the realm

• The classes of citizens recognized by the medieval
English Parliament as having distinct rights and
duties and requiring (or deserving) representation
in Parliament in distinct ways.

• Three such classes were identified originally: the

clergy, the barons and the commons

• In the UK the press has been called (by Carlyle)

the fourth estate, the trade unions the fifth.
 History

Lords
Aristocracy Commons Media
Spiritual

Burke said “there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery
yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than they all. It is not a figure
of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact, .... Printing, which comes
necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent
Writing, Democracy is inevitable. ..... Whoever can speak, speaking now to the
whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable
weight in lawmaking, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has,
what revenues or garnitures: the requisite thing is that he have a tongue which
others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite.”

Thomas Carlyle
• Carlyle here was describing the newly found
power of the man of letters, and, by extension, the
newspaper reporter.
• In his account, it seems that the press are a new
fourth estate added to the three existing estates
(as they were conceived of at the time) running
the country: priesthood, aristocracy and
commons.
• Other modern commentators seem to interpret
the term fourth estate as meaning the fourth
'power' which checks and counterbalances the
three state 'powers' of executive, legislature and
judiciary.
• The mass media are often seen as fulfilling the
vitally important role of fourth estate, the
guardians of democracy and defenders of the
public interest.
Judicial Executive Legislature Media?
 Defining the Mass Media
• A medium is a ‘channel of communication’ - a
means through which people send and receive
information.
• The printed word, for example, is a medium;
when we read a newspaper or magazine,
something is communicated to us in some way.
• Similarly, electronic forms of communication -
television, telephones, film and such like - are
media (the plural of medium).
• Mass, means ‘many’

• What we are interested in is how and why

different forms of media are used to “transmit
information to” a large number of people (the
audience).

• And how it is “being received by” a large number

of people.
• Mass media, therefore, refer to channels of
communication that involve transmitting
information in some way, shape or form to a large
number of people.
• ‘One-to-many’ communication - ‘one’ person
communicates to many people (the audience) “at
the same time” in a way that is largely
impersonal.

• The communication is one-way, in the sense that

those communicating a message to an audience
don’t receive simultaneous feedback from that
audience.
• Mass media can be differentiated from other
types of communication (interpersonal
communication that occurs on a one-to-one basis)
in terms of four essential characteristics:

1. Distance: Impersonal, lacks immediacy, one way

2. Technology
3. Scale: simultaneous communication with many
people
4. Commodity: Comes at a price
Media of “Mass” Communication
• Print
– Newspapers
– Magazines
– Books

• Audio
– Radio
– Music/Sound Recording

• Visual
– Film
– TV
– Videogames

• Digital
– Internet