The Idealised Watchdog Estate

Abstract

‘A man without a newspaper is half-clad, and imperfectly furnished for the battle of life. From being persecuted and then contemptuously tolerated, it has become the rival of organised governments. Will it become their superior?’ W. T. Stead, 1886 ‘People were reluctant to confer on newspaper its fully idealised role. The newspaper could act as watchdog of government, but the government also was asked to be a watchdog of the press.’ Denis McQuail, 1976 By claiming a public and essentially democratic purpose, which shapes its other imperatives, the news media has been able to define itself as an institution with a public political, social and cultural role. As a ‘business affected by public purpose’ (Hutchins, 1947: 90), the media has asserted influence across a wide range of endeavours. Indeed it has been argued that the media is central to ‘determining the level of the civilisation in which it operates. Freedom of the press … means freedom to turn that level up or down’ (Hocking, 1947: 45). The contemporary news media has spun the dial in both directions at different times. The claim to this central, independent status is based largely on the liberal arguments of the Enlightenment, which led to the successful creation of the notion of the press as the Fourth Estate in nineteenth-century Britain, and as an institution of such importance to the democratic process that it must not be limited in the United States. It emerged formally in other countries as well – the Fourth Power in France and Spain, the Third Estate in Sweden with constitutional guarantees of press freedom since 1766, and even, for a time, as the Seventh Power in the former Yugoslavia.