Fourth Estate
Encyclopedia
The concept of the Fourth Estate (or fourth estate) is a societal or political force or institution whose influence is not consistently or officially recognized. The Fourth Estate now most commonly refers to the news media
; especially print journalism, referred to hereon as "The Press". Thomas Carlyle
attributed the origin of the term to Edmund Burke
, who used it in a parliamentary debate in 1787 on the opening up of Press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain
. Earlier writers have applied the term to lawyers, to the British
queen (acting as a free agent, independent of the king), and to the proletariat
. The term is a reference to the three Estates of the Realm
.
In Burke's 1787 coining he would have been making reference to the traditional three estates of Parliament
: The Lords Spiritual
, the Lords Temporal and the Commons. If, indeed, Burke did make the statement Carlyle attributes to him, the remark may have been in the back of Carlyle's mind when he wrote in his French Revolution (1837), "A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up; increases and multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable." In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General
: the church, the nobility and the townsmen. 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." By 1835, when William Hazlitt
(another editor of Michel de Montaigne
—see below) applied the term to an individual journalist, William Cobbett
, the phrase was well established.
Oscar Wilde
wrote:
In American English, the phrase "fourth estate" is contrasted with the "fourth branch of government
". 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.
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:
in The Covent Garden Journal (1752):
(This is an early use of "mob" to mean the , the common masses
.)
This sense has prevailed in other countries: In Italy, for example, striking workers in 1890s Turin were depicted as Il quarto stato—The Fourth Estate—in a painting by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo. A political journal of the left, Quarto Stato, published in Milan, Italy, in 1926, also reflected this meaning.
, 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".
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, six hundred commoners." The book is a fictionalization from episodes in the lives of two real-life Press Barons: Robert Maxwell
and Rupert Murdoch
.
News media
The news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something...
; especially print journalism, referred to hereon as "The Press". Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
attributed the origin of the term to Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
, who used it in a parliamentary debate in 1787 on the opening up of Press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain
House of Commons of Great Britain
The House of Commons of Great Britain was the lower house of the Parliament of Great Britain between 1707 and 1801. In 1707, as a result of the Acts of Union of that year, it replaced the House of Commons of England and the third estate of the Parliament of Scotland, as one of the most significant...
. Earlier writers have applied the term to lawyers, to the British
Kingdom of Great Britain
The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...
queen (acting as a free agent, independent of the king), and to the proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
. The term is a reference to the three Estates of the Realm
Estates of the realm
The Estates of the realm were the broad social orders of the hierarchically conceived society, recognized in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period in Christian Europe; they are sometimes distinguished as the three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and commoners, and are often referred to by...
.
The Press
The term in current use is now appropriated to the Press, with the earliest use in this sense described by Thomas Carlyle in his book On Heroes and Hero Worship:In Burke's 1787 coining he would have been making reference to the traditional three estates of Parliament
Parliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...
: The Lords Spiritual
Lords Spiritual
The Lords Spiritual of the United Kingdom, also called Spiritual Peers, are the 26 bishops of the established Church of England who serve in the House of Lords along with the Lords Temporal. The Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian, is not represented by spiritual peers...
, the Lords Temporal and the Commons. If, indeed, Burke did make the statement Carlyle attributes to him, the remark may have been in the back of Carlyle's mind when he wrote in his French Revolution (1837), "A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up; increases and multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable." In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General
French States-General
In France under the Old Regime, the States-General or Estates-General , was a legislative assembly of the different classes of French subjects. It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates, which were called and dismissed by the king...
: the church, the nobility and the townsmen. Carlyle, however, may have mistaken his attribution: Thomas Macknight
Thomas Macknight
Thomas MacKnight was an Anglo-Irish newspaper editor, biographer and publisher. He was the originator of the Two Nations Theory in 1896, which argues that the Ulster Protestants are a distinct Irish nation....
, writing in 1858, observes that Burke was merely a teller
Teller (elections)
A teller is a person who counts the votes in an election, vote or poll. Tellers are also known as scrutineers, poll-watchers, challengers or checkers.-United Kingdom:...
at the "illustrious nativity of the Fourth Estate". If Burke is excluded, other candidates for coining the term are Henry Brougham
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux was a British statesman who became Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.As a young lawyer in Scotland Brougham helped to found the Edinburgh Review in 1802 and contributed many articles to it. He went to London, and was called to the English bar in...
speaking in Parliament in 1823 or 1824 and Thomas Macaulay in an essay of 1828 reviewing Hallam's Constitutional History
Henry Hallam
Henry Hallam was an English historian.-Life:The only son of John Hallam, canon of Windsor and dean of Bristol, Henry Hallam was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1799...
: "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm." By 1835, when William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...
(another editor of Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...
—see below) applied the term to an individual journalist, William Cobbett
William Cobbett
William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly...
, the phrase was well established.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
wrote:
In American English, the phrase "fourth estate" is contrasted with the "fourth branch of government
Fourth branch of government
In the American political system, the fourth branch of government refers to a group that influences the three branches of governance defined in the American Constitution . Such groups can include the press , the people, and interest groups. U.S...
". 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.
In European law
In 1580 MontaigneMichel de Montaigne
Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...
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:
The proletariat
An early citation for this is Henry FieldingHenry Fielding
Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....
in The Covent Garden Journal (1752):
(This is an early use of "mob" to mean the , the common masses
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
.)
This sense has prevailed in other countries: In Italy, for example, striking workers in 1890s Turin were depicted as Il quarto stato—The Fourth Estate—in a painting by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo. A political journal of the left, Quarto Stato, published in Milan, Italy, in 1926, also reflected this meaning.
British Queens Consort
In a parliamentary debate of 1789 Thomas Powys, 1st Baron LilfordThomas Powys, 1st Baron Lilford
Thomas Powys, 1st Baron Lilford was a British peer and Member of Parliament.Lilford was elected to the House of Commons for Northamptonshire in 1774, a seat he held until 1797. The latter year he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lilford, of Lilford in the County of Northampton. The family seat...
, MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
, demanded of minister
Minister of the Crown
Minister of the Crown is the formal constitutional term used in the Commonwealth realms to describe a minister to the reigning sovereign. The term indicates that the minister serves at His/Her Majesty's pleasure, and advises the monarch, or viceroy, on how to exercise the Crown prerogatives...
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham PC was a British Whig statesman who led Britain during the Seven Years' War...
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".
Fiction
In his novel The Fourth Estate Jeffrey Archer wrote "In May 1789, Louis XVILouis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estates General
Estates-General of 1789
The Estates-General of 1789 was the first meeting since 1614 of the French Estates-General, a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the nobility, the Church, and the common people...
'. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners." The book is a fictionalization from episodes in the lives of two real-life Press Barons: Robert Maxwell
Robert Maxwell
Ian Robert Maxwell MC was a Czechoslovakian-born British media proprietor and former Member of Parliament , who rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire...
and Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
.
See also
- Estates of the realmEstates of the realmThe Estates of the realm were the broad social orders of the hierarchically conceived society, recognized in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period in Christian Europe; they are sometimes distinguished as the three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and commoners, and are often referred to by...
- First Estate
- Second Estate
- Third Estate
- Fifth EstateFifth EstateFifth Estate is a US periodical, originally based in Detroit, Michigan, but now produced in a variety of locations. Its editorial collective shares divergent views on the topics the magazine addresses but generally shares an anti-authoritarian outlook and a non-dogmatic, action-oriented approach...
External links
- "The Fourth Estate", Section V of French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle, as posted in the online library of World Wide School
- "Invisible Children"
- "Invisible Children: The Fourth Estate"