We need a strong fourth estate

‘I spent a lot of time on my – farewell address talking about the state of our democracy.  It goes without saying that essential to that is a free press.  That is part of how this place, this country, this grand experiment of self-government has to work.  It doesn’t work if we don’t have a well-informed citizenry, and you are the conduit through which they receive the information about what’s taking place in the halls of power.’

Those are the words spoken by President Obama in the very early part of his last press conference this afternoon, 18^th January 2017.  Not only do they apply to America but they also apply to every democratic country in the world including Britain.

In an earlier piece I stated that ‘we do not deserve a free press’. That statement appears to blatantly contradict what the President was saying but I am not.  What I was saying was that to have a free press there is a cost that all of us should be prepared to pay to finance the press or the ‘fourth estate’ of government by paying for hardcopy editions at the newsstands, online subscriptions or licence fees for public broadcasting services.  The other three estates being the legislative, the executive and the judiciary.  It is the fourth estate that scrutinises the decisions made by the other three estates and the people in the halls of power making those decisions.

There is an abundance of free news available through social media but really how trustworthy is it?  Can we use it to inform our voting decisions?  Can we use it as a basis for our opinions?  We are all free to choose whatever we want but I do not want to choose news coverage that is ill informed, ill founded, completely wrong and published without any sense of responsibility as to how what is published will affect peoples’ lives.

What I want is news that is well informed, well founded and published responsibly after undergoing fact checking before publication.  If what is published is pushing one opinion or another that really does not matter to me.  If I want to form an opinion about a subject then I will look to other sources to establish what the other opinions are.  Then I will make my own decision about my opinion.

If it was not for a free press then President Nixon would not have been forced to resign just before impeachment due to the Watergate scandal.  All the work to uncover that scandal was carried out by journalists from the Washington Post.  If it was not for a free press then here in the UK the scandal earlier this century about MP’s expenses would not have been exposed by The Telegraph.

Good journalism uncovers stories like these that are verified prior to publication.  That work does not come cheap so that is why we should all make an effort to pay for the news we are being fed if we want it to maintain it’s integrity. Otherwise we certainly do not deserve a free press and once that freedom of the press starts to be eroded then we will no longer have a strong fourth estate.