Why press credibility is the fourth estate's biggest challenge

Every year, India celebrates National Press Day on November 16. Today, Press Clubs across the country would celebrate this day, underscore its significance, and resolve to recommit and rededicate themselves to strengthen the country’s Fourth Estate, also known as the media. This year’s theme to observe the day is “Safeguarding Press Credibility Amidst Rising Misinformation,” a befitting theme considering the country’s current atmosphere and environment of obfuscation—not least by the Press itself.

We are informed that the “Fourth Estate” emerged in the 19th century to describe the press as a crucial, independent power in a democracy, distinct from the traditional three estates of the realm (clergy, nobility, and commoners; today it’s the legislature, executive, and judiciary). The term is often attributed to Thomas Carlyle, who linked it to Edmund Burke, while the concept of a free press as a watchdog holding government accountable has been championed by figures like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Today, the Fourth Estate continues to refer to the press and media’s role in informing the public and scrutinizing those in power, though its modern form is increasingly shaped by the internet and social media. We are further informed that the idea of the Fourth Estate signifies that, whatever the formal constitution, genuine political power resides in the informal role of the press, which in turn derives from the relationship between the press and its readers.

However, over two centuries later, the media is far distanced from its original objectives. Perhaps it can be said that as people evolved along with changed historical, political, economic, social, cultural, and technological dynamics, so did the concept(s) and practice of media. And, it is very likely that we and future generations will see more change, primarily because society is dynamic and the press does not control technology. Governments, through their policy and law-making powers, and tech companies, through their innovations, inventions, research, and marketing, control human minds, and therefore societies and nations.

In the process, genuine political power, which resided in the informal role of the press, derived from the relationship between the press and its readers, has been hijacked and appropriated by Governments and powerful global companies and corporations. Considering the intimate relationship between the two, a large section of the media has been turned into a pawn for power and profits. The gradual and subtle power shift to one Estate of democracy and a non-Estate in tandem is now overt and blatant. This combined power now seeks to stamp its indelibility unambiguously. The media is today a caged bird forced to sing somebody’s song.

There are countries that have always caged and imprisoned their media, and increasingly now there are countries that create and sell an illusion of a free press. Then there are a number of countries with varying degrees of the power grip. But what of the media? Surely, it is aware of its existential reality, challenges, and dilemma? Or, were its objectives never those of the Fourth Estate’s objectives, or have they ‘evolved’ to safeguard its existence? But we cannot paint all media with the same colour because there are media outlets still totally focused on telling truth to power despite trials and tribulations, and they are what we need to celebrate today.

There are still honest, hard-working, and intrepid journalists determined to tell truth to power and to society. They are the ones we ought to celebrate today. Not those who are ensconced in newsrooms by the sheer force of their noise to push power’s propaganda. In fact, we celebrate National Press Day to salute the media and journalists that speak truth to power by refusing to be outshouted and silenced by the ear-splitting din of political and economic half-truths and hyperbole.

In the evolving dynamics of Governments’ and big corporations’ pursuit of tightening their grip over the media that still practices ethical journalism, where do the people stand? Evidently, in either of the camps—depending on personal political and economic agenda and ambitions and ideological perspectives and persuasion. Then, there is ignorance or sheer indifference, both of which are equally dangerous in a democracy and for democracy. However, people’s ignorance and sheer indifference are advantages and assets for power.

A country’s dismal annual budgetary allocation for education, undermining and/or dismantling of democratic institutions, and tightening the grip over or controlling the media are few pointers as to why power thrives in people’s ignorance and indifference. There are also instruments of fear and silence, of withholding economic empowerment, political disenfranchisement, social vilification, enactment of authoritarian laws, bullying, name-calling, shaming, and rewriting cultural and political history. It is a tough call for any people whose instincts, experiences, memory, poetry, and songs are abused, humiliated, and devalued, and whose environment is devastated, desecrated, and desertified.

It is also imperative to discern the media that has emerged out of faith, belief, motivations, and commitment to the essence and ethos of democracy, which are being sought to be silenced, and those that have come to exist as commercial enterprises, powerful influencers, and are power’s sycophants, lackeys, and flunkies. It is equally imperative to discern social media as an aid to boost and strengthen democracy as opposed to a tool to undermine and emasculate democracy by creating divisive, diversionary, and distracting issues.

It then becomes crucial to silence the constant noise generated in some sections of the press and social media to listen to the little voice that sets the moral compass. Ultimately, the media’s fundamental challenge today is our value systems, particularly our integrity. Especially for the press, it is imperative to question and examine our value systems so as to enable and empower citizens to do the same. In doing so, democracy may yet be rescued and restored to its rightful place in our lives.

Like any other institution, the media too is a product of its milieu and doesn’t operate in a vacuum. What we see today mainly is a large section of the media adapting and adjusting to changed political, economic, social, and cultural dynamics to survive any which way, which conflicts with the essence and ethos of the Fourth Estate and the very soul of democracy. Nonetheless, it is encouraging that we see the relentless pursuit of good over bad, right over wrong, and light over darkness.

So we know because of that last bit of hope, that last bit of never-say-die, and that last bit of digging the heels, the good, the right, and the light will prevail—they must. So, today is a good time to root for the unchained and unsilenced media and journalists, who work on hope, never say die, and dig the heels deeper, for true democracy powered by an unfettered and unimpeachable press is a gift we must reclaim for marginalized communities, the voiceless, the shackled, those justice ignores, history forgets, economics evades, and culture shuns, and for ourselves because nobody will. The only way to safeguard press credibility is to speak truth to power and to ourselves.