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LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 6 May 2007 Issue

Edmund Burke, noted British political theorist in the eighteenth century, said: “Three Estates in Parliament; but in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth estate more important far than they all.”

On this Burke’s Fourth Estate, British writer and historian, Thomas Carlyle, in his 1841 book On Heroes and Hero Worship further wrote: “It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact, — very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal everyday extempore Printing, as we see at present. 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.”

The Fourth Estate refers to the public press, the generic term that adverts to journalists and media organizations obtaining and gathering information for public dissemination.

Historically, public press is not free.

Not long after the invention of the printing press, Pope Alexander VI issued a notice in 1501 that required printers to submit a copy of printed matters to church authorities before publication under pain of fines and excommunication.

In 1534, the English monarchy also issued a royal proclamation that required prepublication licensing, a form of censorship that became more inclined to suppress political criticisms than religious heresy. English poet John Milton opposed and attacked this policy of prior restraint in his 1644 work Areopagitica and called on parliament to suppress offensive publications only after their appearance if necessary. Although it took at least half a century before the licensing and censorship laws were abolished, Milton’s advocacy eventually became the cornerstone of present-day concept of press freedom.

In the United States, the development of press freedom that was later enshrined in its Constitution as the First Amendment is generally attributed to the celebrated seditious libel prosecution of New York journalist, John Peter Zenger, in 1735 for publishing political attacks on William Cosby, then governor of New York. His lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued that contrary to established English law, there was no libel in publishing the truth. Zenger was acquitted.

Democracy would lose all its sense without the freedom of the press. To ensure that the press is free means empowering the people to be informed at all times on state and global affairs, to make informed judgment on matters that affect their lives as citizens and as a member of society, to keep government and their political leaders constantly accountable for their actions and performance, and to satisfy their insatiable desire for knowledge and quests for truth.

Whatever argument against press freedom in the context of bad, irresponsible or seditious press to justify prior restraint, censorship or control of mass media is an insult to human intelligence and discernment. No individual or group of individuals can lay exclusive claim or has even the monopoly to dictate what people should or should not know or substitute one’s judgment what should be or should not be expressed.  Every story, every content, every news would always stand and fall based on their merits because man is a rational being.

It is true that mass media is so powerful that it is also a convenient haven for propaganda, lies, fabrications, immorality or undue influence. It is for this reason that unscrupulous persons and institutions would exert every attempt and effort to control it because in the natural scheme of things in a free and vibrant press, they would be marginalized and lose altogether their malicious designs.

The world has yet to see a nation oppressed because of press freedom. But almost always histories of oppression start with the muscling of the Fourth Estate.

Those who are afraid of press freedom actually fear for themselves.