[Vision2020] 36% say Newspapers Need "government approval"

[Tbertruss at aol.com]

All:

Many people in the USA don't appear to understand the absolutely critical 
role played by one of the fundamental institutions in our culture, the "fourth 
estate" of the media.  If this branch of our democratic system is not 
functioning as it should, as "the guardians of democracy, defenders of the public 
interest (see bottom of this post)" then we do not have a democracy.

Consider the shocking results of this recent survey:

Some U.S. Students Say Press Freedoms Go Too Far

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
    
One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more 
restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before 
readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get 
"government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able 
to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.

01/31/2005 07:04    

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050131072009990029

---------------------------

Over a third of high school students in the USA think the government should 
control newspaper content!  If true, this is a colossal failure of our culture. 
 These results sound more like the Soviet Union than the leader of the 
"democratic free world."  While we are ostensibly spreading democracy at the end of 
a gun barrel to other nations, we are failing to educate fundamental de
mocratic values in the USA.

--------------------------------------------------

The Mass Media as Fourth Estate

http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/index.html

The mass media are often attacked by left-wing critics: from within the 
broadly Marxist vein of critical theory they are criticized for reproducing the 
dominant bourgeois culture; from within the 'political economy' vein of research, 
they are attacked for representing the interests of those who own them (see, 
for example, Chomsky's 'propaganda model'). 

Carlyle's definition of the fourth estate

However, from the perspective of those researchers who see the media as 
situated within the model of a pluralist liberal democracy, the mass media are 
often seen as fulfilling the vitally important rôle of fourth estate, the gu
ardians of democracy, defenders of the public interest. The term fourth estate is 
frequently attributed to the nineteenth century historian Carlyle, though he 
himself seems to have attributed it to Edmund Burke:

> 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 law-making, 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
> 
> Carlyle (1905) pp.349-350

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.

-------------------------------------------

V2020 Post by Ted Moffett
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20050131/8f1f7e3a/attachment.htm