The news media is often seen as a critical check on the power of the other three estates, serving as a watchdog to hold elected officials and other public figures accountable for their actions. [https://politicaldictionary.com/words/fourth-estate/]
For centuries, since the French Revolution, the media have been known as the “Fourth Estate,” meaning it was a watchdog for those in power in the other three estates: the first the clergy, the second the nobility, the third the commoners and bourgeois, and the fourth the press.
The clergy and the nobility have declined in their influence over society, while the commoners and the nobility have had a renaissance in our modern democracy.
Since the rise of Donald Trump as an authority on society and the media, the public has regarded the media as suspect, biased, and participating in corruption in the United States. Perhaps some of these claims against the media are valid, in that the leading newspapers of the country, the New York Times and the Washington Post are known to lean toward the liberal side, but inexplicably conservatives still depend on the right wing media, such as the New York Post, Fox News Network, and Newsmax as if they were reliable media because of their right leanings.
That seems like a double standard, judging media by its political stance, since the liberal media are called corrupt and biased because of their political leanings, rather than by a standard of journalism. Every media outlet that disagrees with your political view must be corrupt, not because of the content of their news and commentary, but because they disagree with you. This approach to media criticism was initiated by former President Trump, who was known to be in close contact with Fox commentators throughout his administration.
In a study of “The Trump Administration and the Media” Leonard Downie reported that,
Some analysts have matched false statements Trump has made with what was said about the same subject at about the same time on Fox News shows that he watches. He also has retweeted false statements that he has found on Twitter, including some from right-wing conspiracy groups. https://cpj.org/reports/2020/04/trump-media-attacks-credibility-leaks/
The attacks on media have been reserved especially for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN News, not on the news media in general. These liberal-leaning news organizations have been characterized as reporting “fake news,” while the more conservative media have been quoted as fact.
In fact the ex-President gave greater access to right wing news organizations, as reported by Downie in his investigative article.
Nearly half of the 70 individual press interviews that Trump gave in 2019 were with friendly, right-leaning news organizations, including Fox News, Fox Business News, and The Daily Caller, according to the count kept by Mark Knoller of CBS News. “You can go months at a time when you see the president do interviews with only one news organization,” ABC’s Karl told me.
What Mr. Trump initiated was an attack on the liberal news media, rather than the news media in general, showing that he was attacking their journalistic slant, more than their accuracy. So when Trump railed about the “fake news media,” he was referring to the news organizations that disagreed with him. Presidents before Trump from the Clintons to Barack Obama have complained about their news coverage, but none of them have attacked the media as the Fourth Estate per se. Trump explained to CBS news reporter Lesley Stahl, who observed,
“You know this is getting tired [ his attack on the media] . Why are you doing it over and over? It’s boring and it’s time to end that.“
And he [Trump] said, “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so that, when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you. [https://cpj.org/reports/2020/04/trump-media-attacks-credibility-leaks/]
Apparently the unfairness of these kinds of attacks is lost on many of Trump’s followers, because they agree the “news media” is biased and unreliable without including Fox, the NewYork Post, or Newsmax among the abusers of the truth. It seldom occurs to them that Trump is condemning his critics while supporting any media that give him high ratings. That itself is biased criticism.
So really the President and his co-conspirators in Congress are not trying to make a journalistic criticism of the news media, so much as discrediting their authority to criticize, and degrading their authority to check, the power of government. Instead of the Fourth Estate, the media have become the Irrelevant Estate, unable to make government accountable. The consequences of this are well known to history’s dictators (e.g. Hitler, Stalin) whose first strategy was to disarm the media. As the late John McCain admitted on “Meet the Press,” speaking from Germany
where he was attending the Munich Security Conference [February 18, 2017)] McCain said that without a free press, “I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.” [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/sen-mccain-meet-press-defends-free-press-after-trump-tweet-n722831]
Instead of the Fourth Estate, the media have become the Unreliable Estate, unable to make government accountable. The consequences of this are well known to history’s dictators, whose early strategy was to disarm the media. That’s how the media lost its mojo.