Kawsar Uddin Mahmud :
Is Fourth Estate going on by its root directions? Is Media or Press following the policies of Edmund Burke? These are the burning questions of the contemporary era!
In general, Fourth Estate or Fourth Power is used to describe ‘press’.
In details, “the Term fourth Estate implies that the press and news media both in explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issues. Though it is not formally recognized as a part of a political system, it wields significant indirect social influence”. It is the core definition of Fourth Estate (that is taken from wikipedia’). So, here we can say that Press and Media is the combination of explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issues.
The term, Fourth Estate is firstly used by Edmund Burke in 1887, in a parliamentary debate of the House of Commons of Great Britain, Thomas Carlyle wrote in his book, ‘On Heroes and Hero Worship’. Burke said, “there are three estates in parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all”. Thomas Carlyle also attributed to Edmund Burke about the other three estates. These three estates of the realm: ‘The Lords Spiritual or the Cergy, the Lords Temporal or the Nobility and the Commoners.’
We have to concern with the core thinking of Edmund Burke. He said, “There sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all”. He emphasized the contribution of The Press in a positive and descent way which is not followed by the most of the presses and the media.
Let’s talk about the Social Media’. Would we say Social Media is the part of fourth estate or not? Lots of prominent writer and journalist think that Social Media is not fourth estate or not a part of it. But if we see the contribution and the influence of the Social Media in this contemporary era we have to say that it is another major part of fourth estate.
At present, Media is in the hand of the mass people. Open up your facebook live option and upload a video of any matter wherever you are staying that will be highlight in the next day in the front page of News Media. The president of the U.S.A, Donald Trump or the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatullah Khomeni is updating all the actions and the reactions in Twitter, in the next day it highlights on the front page of BBC, CNN or Al-Jazeera etc. This is the power of social media that we can’t neglect.
The core idea which is against the idea of Edmund Burke is that the mass people of the United States don’t know about the term the Fourth Estate or Fourth Power but they know about the term ‘The Fourth Branch of Government’ which is always controlled by the government of U.S.A and committed to follow the directions of U.S government . Why this strategy does U.S government use?
Here the core policy is that, If we use fourth estate that means press or news media has the power of independence and have option to be asked people what about Edmund Burke told and for this he named it ‘fourth estate’, but if we use it as the fourth branch of government that means press or media has limitation. It has limitation to talk about the interest, liberty as well as rights of people, it has limitation to update all the news and finally it has no way to follow another way against government.
Let’s talk about the killing of ‘Qassem Suleimani’. Every media highlighted the news in a major way, by this most of the people of the world know about the name and the contribution of him. Why the international media did it? After bombing, Donald Trump himself twitted on his own twitter I.D with a great joy! By doing this, US tried to make people understand about the capacity of weapons and nuclear of it and make people feared. But, That was a bad policy of Trump Government which have been already mocked by the policy makers.
After few days, one of the chief commanders of CIA, Michael D’Andrea was been killed by Taliban in Afghanistan. There were nearly fifteen members of CIA and high officials of U.S government who have been killed but US tried heart and soul to hide it but Russian news and CNN covered it, even not highly way just as simple as could. CIA denied this news but some high officials of US told that ‘they were killed for the bed situation of weather’. Pentagon didn’t clear any statement even not Washington.
We can also concern with the current worst epidemic ‘CoronaVirus’. China wholeheartedly tried to say that the deaths of people are not more than 700 till now but some International news covered that the number of deaths are more than 24,000.
So, ‘A’ question can be raised here that, what is the role of media and newspapers whatever we say?
From the realist perspective, international media are always controlled by powerful states like US, France, UK, Russia an’ China. If they want any news can be covered otherwise media are always influenced by them. It can be easily understood that US refers media as ‘fourth branch of the government’, not ‘fourth estate’. If we say media as ‘fourth estate’ it should follow the term of Edmund Burke. And the circle of media policy is going on and on, although they try to be liberal but they can’t be at all.
Media should be responsible to the people at all otherwise they will turn their faith on it. In this era it is not possible to be free but they (media) should think at least about the rights of people to get the right news not fake or converted.
(Kawsar Uddin (Mahmud), Student., Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka)
