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Biography
Other usesJournalismThe Fourth Estate (or fourth estate ) is a societal or political force or institution whose influence is not consistently or officially recognized. "Fourth Estate" most commonly refers to the news media ; especially print journalism or "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 .cite book|last=Schultz|first=Julianne|title=Reviving the fourth estate|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, England|year=1998|page=49|isbn=978-0-521-62970-6 Earlier writers have applied the term to lawyers, to the British people|British Queen consort|queens consort (acting as a free agent, independent of the king), and to the proletariat . The term makes implicit reference to the earlier division of the three Estates of the Realm .
The Press
In current use the term is applied to the Press,cite book|title= Oxford English Dictionary |publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford, England|year=1989|edition=2|chapter=estate, n, 7b with the earliest use in this sense described by Thomas Carlyle in his book On Heroes and Hero Worship :
quote|Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.cite book|last=Carlyle|first=Thomas|authorlink= |title=On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History. Six Lectures. Reported with emendations and additions |url= http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20585/20585-h/20585-h.htm|edition=Dent, 1908|date=19 May 1840|publisher=James Fraser|location=London|page=392|chapter=Lecture V: The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns|oclc=2158602 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.OED: "estate, n, 6a" 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) that "A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up; increases and multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable."citation |url= http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/european/TheFrenchRevolution/chap39.html |volume=Sixth |chapter=Chapter V. The Fourth Estate |title=The French Revolution |publisher=Griffith Farrane Browne |publication-place=London |pages=146& ndash;148 |accessdate=November 12, 2009 In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General : the First Estate|church , the Second Estate|nobility and the Third Estate|townsmen . Carlyle, however, may have mistaken his attribution: Thomas Macknight , writing in 1858, observes that Burke was merely a Teller (elections)|teller at the "illustrious nativity of the Fourth Estate".cite book|last=Macknight|first=Thomas|title=History of the life and times of Edmund Burke |publisher=Chapman and Hall|location=London|year=1858|volume=1|page=462|oclc=3565018 If Burke is excluded, other candidates for coining the term are Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux|Henry Brougham speaking in Parliament in 1823 or 1824cite journal|last=Ross|first=Charles|date=9 June 1855|title=Replies to Minor Queries|journal= Notes and Queries |publisher= William Thoms |location=London|volume=11|issue=294|page=452|accessdate=16 December 2010 Ross (October 1800–6 December 1884) was chief parliamentary reporter for The Times . and Thomas Macaulay in an essay of 1828 reviewing '' Henry Hallam|Hallam's Constitutional History '': "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm."cite journal|last=Macaulay|first=Thomas|date=September 1828|title=Hallam's constitutional history|journal= Edinburgh Review|The Edinburgh Review |publisher=Longmans|location=London|volume=48|pages=165 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.cite book|last=Hazlitt|first=William|title=Character of W. Cobbett M. P|year=1835|publisher=J Watson|location=Finsbury, London|page=3|oclc=4451746|quote=He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist...He is a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country.cite book|last1=de Montaigne|first1=Michel|authorlink1=Michel de Montaigne|last2=Cotton|first2=Charles|authorlink2=Charles Cotton|editor=Hazlitt, William|title=The Complete Works of Michael de Montaigne|edition=1842|year=1680|publisher=J Templeman|location=London
Oscar Wilde wrote:
cquote|In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody & mdash; was it Burke? & mdash; called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.cite journal|last=Wilde|first=Oscar|date=February 1891|title= The Soul of Man under Socialism |journal= Fortnightly Review |volume=49|issue=290|pages=292–319 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.Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon. Unreliable Sources (New York, NY: Lyle Stuart, 1990) ISBN 0-8184-0521-X
Alternative meanings
In European law
In 1580 Michel de Montaigne|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:citation|author= John Florio (tr.)|title= Michel de Montaigne |publisher= Folio Society |year=1603|publication-date=2006|volume=1|page=104For a more recent translation, see Hazlitt's edition of 1842:"What can be more outrageous than to see a nation where, by lawful custom, the office of a Judge is to be bought and sold, where judgments are paid for with ready money, and where justice may be legally denied him that has not the wherewithal to pay...a fourth estate of wrangling lawyers to add to the three ancient ones of the church, nobility and people, which fourth estate, having the laws in their hands, and sovereign power over men's lives and fortunes, make a body separate from the nobility." (Hazlitt 1842: 45) quote|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. lang-la|quatriesme estat 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): quote|None of our political writers...take notice of any more than three estates, namely, Kings, Lords, and Commons...passing by in silence that very large and powerful body which form the fourth estate in this community...The Mob.cite journal|last=Fielding|first=Henry|date=13 June 1752|journal=Covent Garden Journal|location=London|issue=47, Quoted in OED "estate, n, 7b".(This is an early use of "mob" to mean the lang|la| mobile vulgus , the proletariat|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.cite book|last=Paulicelli |first=Eugenia |title=The Cambridge companion to modern Italian culture|editor=Baranski, Zygmunt G.; West, Rebecca J. |publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, England|year=2001|page=248|isbn=978-0-521-55982-9 For his painting, Pellizza transferred the action to his home village of Volpedo . A political journal of the left, Quarto Stato , published in Milan, Italy, in 1926, also reflected this meaning.cite book|last=Pugliese|first=Stanislao G. |title=Carlo Rosselli: socialist heretic and antifascist exile|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, MA|year=1999|pages=67–69|isbn=978-0-674-00053-7
British Queens Consort
In a parliamentary debate of 1789 Thomas Powys, 1st Baron Lilford , Member of Parliament|MP , demanded of Minister of the Crown|minister William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham that he should not allow powers of British Regency|regency to "a fourth estate: the queen".cite book|title=Dodsley's Annual Register for 1789|editor= Edmund Burke |publisher=J Dodsley|location=London|year=1792|volume=31|page=112 The Whig (British political party)|Whigs in parliament supported the transfer of power to the George IV of the United Kingdom|Regent , rather than the sick king's Queen Consort|consort , Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz|Queen Charlotte . 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 (novel)| The Fourth Estate Jeffrey Archer wrote "In May 1789, Louis XVI of France|Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the ' Estates-General of 1789|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 Baron s: Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch .
See also
Estates of the realm
* Estates of the realm#First Estate|First Estate
* Estates of the realm#Second Estate|Second Estate
* Estates of the realm#Third Estate|Third Estate
* Fifth Estate
Notes
reflist|2
External links
" http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/european/TheFrenchRevolution/chap39.html The Fourth Estate", Section V of French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle, as posted in the online library of World Wide School
wiktionary|fourth estate Category:Journalism
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