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The fourth estate is an essential component of our system of governance. This really is without debate as you couldn't possibly have a system of democracy witho

The fourth estate is an essential component of our system of governance. This really is without debate as you couldn't possibly have a system of democracy without a way to inform the voting public as to who is running and what promises they are making. The problem with your line of thinking is that you're trying to say that the news media is just like anything else that is competing for resources and attention. You're only describing the world through private interests. With your critique you're placing "journalism" in an interchangeable roll with "Call of Duty", cynically denying its public roll in our society. We absolutely need to address the broader societal changes brought about by technological changes. An economic approach is not enough. Our systems of law and order are incredibly complex. Governance is an ever evolving call-and-response that attempts to balance individual rights with the needs of the greater good. We need to hold ourselves and the rest of the citizens of the world to these high standards, as our forebears have done for generations, or we may lose the wondrous liberties they fought so hard to maintain.

mc32 11y ago
It would seem, at first blush, the fourth estate is being replaced by the people themselves, in the form of whistleblowers with access to social media as well as the population at large petitioning (organizing awareness) via social media, so the press are being subverted by the people. They don't call the shots. They don't decide what's right and wrong with government. It's the people and whistleblowers with social media tools at their disposal. So now the press try to catch up to the social winds and try to latch on perhaps tacking on their philosophical take and their view of social contracts and responsibility (as their token value add), but they are no longer the driving force. They simply are now trying to ride the wave. A few are able to keep their course and continue to produce valuable content that people are willing to pay for, as people have noted, the economist, among a few others.
- williamcotton 11y ago
  The previous platform for newspapers was public in nature. These new social media platforms have consolidated and are managed by a few private corporations. As a private company, like a private individual, they have every right to decide what should or shouldn't be hanging on their walls, so to speak. Standing on a corner and selling a political pamphlet, journal or newspaper is the foundation of the fourth estate. This happened on public streets and sidewalks, not in pseudo-public spaces like today's shopping malls or corporate-owned courtyards. It came with publicly sanctioned protections for the right to do so. If the old media are dying off to be replaced by these new forms that are digital and self-published in nature, we need to have a very serious conversation about the dangers of these pseudo-public spaces like Facebook and Twitter, who get to decide not only how but which people see what is published. Unrelated, but perhaps the dangers of direct democracy are present in the advent of direct media, in a way that would have been unpredictable to those who set up the original checks and balances. Should we try to come up with better public platforms for publishing that take some of these issues in to consideration?
  - Kalium 11y ago
    No. We should let people build things and then we will collectively decide - in the series of a form of individual decisions - what our better public platforms look like.
    - williamcotton 11y ago
      Just exactly how do a series of market driven consumer decisions lead to a public platform? Republics like the United States and most other liberal democracies are founded on social contracts that have never been dictated by the kind of corporatism that you're describing and in fact have always rallied against it. Even the traditionally held conservative commentators like Edmund Burke railed against things like the British East Indies Company and warned against "corporate tyranny". That the State ought to confine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of the State, namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to every thing that is truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity. What you're failing to recognize is that we've already given companies like Facebook a public platform through our system of corporate legal structures and more obviously though things like network neutrality. Facebook, like any corporation or any faction of private interest, will take as much territory as it is possibly allowed. It is up to external checks from a government "of the people by the people for the people" to regulate and contain these factional interests. Federalist #10 does a much better job with the discussions related to factional interest than I could ever hope to fit in to a comment box, as do the writings of Paine, Jefferson and, I really can't recommend him enough, especially to the economically minded, Edmund Burke. Also, all of the discussion and legal precedent around the anti-trust laws are very pertinent to any discussions of the limits of corporate power. And yes, in case it isn't clear, what I am arguing for is a form of conservatism, but a form not predicated on dogma. Think Chesterton's fence.
      - Kalium 11y ago
        My point is that we cannot hope to dictate in advance what public platforms should look like, how they should be structured, and so on. Instead, we need to let people decide what they want to treat as a public platform and then base decisions around that. It's what's going to happen anyway. We may as well spare ourselves the wasted effort. I haven't failed to recognize the issues you raise. I have opted to let them be until we collectively know what we actually want our public platforms to look like, as expressed through individual choices. Please, I beg of you sir, do not mistake silence on a subject for an explicit endorsement of corporatism.

mc32 11y ago

It would seem, at first blush, the fourth estate is being replaced by the people themselves, in the form of whistleblowers with access to social media as well as the population at large petitioning (organizing awareness) via social media, so the press are being subverted by the people. They don't call the shots. They don't decide what's right and wrong with government. It's the people and whistleblowers with social media tools at their disposal. So now the press try to catch up to the social winds and try to latch on perhaps tacking on their philosophical take and their view of social contracts and responsibility (as their token value add), but they are no longer the driving force. They simply are now trying to ride the wave. A few are able to keep their course and continue to produce valuable content that people are willing to pay for, as people have noted, the economist, among a few others.

williamcotton 11y ago
The previous platform for newspapers was public in nature. These new social media platforms have consolidated and are managed by a few private corporations. As a private company, like a private individual, they have every right to decide what should or shouldn't be hanging on their walls, so to speak. Standing on a corner and selling a political pamphlet, journal or newspaper is the foundation of the fourth estate. This happened on public streets and sidewalks, not in pseudo-public spaces like today's shopping malls or corporate-owned courtyards. It came with publicly sanctioned protections for the right to do so. If the old media are dying off to be replaced by these new forms that are digital and self-published in nature, we need to have a very serious conversation about the dangers of these pseudo-public spaces like Facebook and Twitter, who get to decide not only how but which people see what is published. Unrelated, but perhaps the dangers of direct democracy are present in the advent of direct media, in a way that would have been unpredictable to those who set up the original checks and balances. Should we try to come up with better public platforms for publishing that take some of these issues in to consideration?
- Kalium 11y ago
  No. We should let people build things and then we will collectively decide - in the series of a form of individual decisions - what our better public platforms look like.
  - williamcotton 11y ago
    Just exactly how do a series of market driven consumer decisions lead to a public platform? Republics like the United States and most other liberal democracies are founded on social contracts that have never been dictated by the kind of corporatism that you're describing and in fact have always rallied against it. Even the traditionally held conservative commentators like Edmund Burke railed against things like the British East Indies Company and warned against "corporate tyranny". That the State ought to confine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of the State, namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to every thing that is truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity. What you're failing to recognize is that we've already given companies like Facebook a public platform through our system of corporate legal structures and more obviously though things like network neutrality. Facebook, like any corporation or any faction of private interest, will take as much territory as it is possibly allowed. It is up to external checks from a government "of the people by the people for the people" to regulate and contain these factional interests. Federalist #10 does a much better job with the discussions related to factional interest than I could ever hope to fit in to a comment box, as do the writings of Paine, Jefferson and, I really can't recommend him enough, especially to the economically minded, Edmund Burke. Also, all of the discussion and legal precedent around the anti-trust laws are very pertinent to any discussions of the limits of corporate power. And yes, in case it isn't clear, what I am arguing for is a form of conservatism, but a form not predicated on dogma. Think Chesterton's fence.
    - Kalium 11y ago
      My point is that we cannot hope to dictate in advance what public platforms should look like, how they should be structured, and so on. Instead, we need to let people decide what they want to treat as a public platform and then base decisions around that. It's what's going to happen anyway. We may as well spare ourselves the wasted effort. I haven't failed to recognize the issues you raise. I have opted to let them be until we collectively know what we actually want our public platforms to look like, as expressed through individual choices. Please, I beg of you sir, do not mistake silence on a subject for an explicit endorsement of corporatism.