FOURTHESTATE

Fourth Estate

The Fourth Estate is a societal or political force or institution whose influence is not consistently or officially recognized. "Fourth Estate" most commonly refers to the news media; especially print journalism or "the press". Thomas Carlyle attributed the origin of the term to Edmund Burke, who used it in a parliamentary debate in 1787 on the opening up of press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain. Earlier writers have applied the term to lawyers, to the British queens consort, and to the proletariat. The term makes implicit reference to the earlier division of the three Estates of the Realm.

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fourth estate

Noun

  1. A hypothetical fourth class of civic subjects, or fourth body (in Britain, after the Crown, and the two Houses of Parliament) which governed legislation.
  2. Journalism or journalists considered as a group; the Press.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: fourth estate
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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