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The processes by which news is selected—the values that determine the selection of one story over another—have long attracted scholarly interest. In the broader context of exploring journalism’s ‘fourth estate’ function and its claim to hold power to account academics have sought to understand the ideological and financial influences that shape news content. These lines of enquiry have tended to focus almost exclusively on the ‘hard’ news of political reporting, with little consideration being given to the underlying ‘news’ values of other forms of journalism. Whilst other forms of journalism might not be judged and ascribed values based on its political significance in the way that ‘hard’ news is, it is nonetheless the case that other forms of journalism cannot be valueless. This chapter seeks to explore the ‘news’ values of travel journalism produced in British tabloid newspapers. It examines the points of divergence and different in the values that underpin tabloid and broadsheet forms of travel journalism. It considers whether tabloid based travel journalism appears to be constituted by specifically ‘tabloid’ values. In so doing it finds that in some forms of tabloid based travel content use visual images as primary drivers of narrative in ways that are very much in keeping with the fast developing interface between the stylistics of tabloidization and technological possibilities of social media inspired and derived content. Identifying and examining the news values of tabloid travel journalism facilitates further understanding of the cultural influence of this form of journalism as well as its economic power and associations.

This chapter provides a case study in reporting human rights, by exploring the plight of the Rohingya ethnic minority and their persecution and subsequent forced migration from Myanmar. The chapter examines the regional complexity of migration and the way Fourth Estate journalism pitches journalists against regional governments. It also looks at emerging alternative journalism for social change models, and how they have been effective in investigating the Rohingya issue. It also presents best practice reporting models within mainstream journalism, while highlighting deficiencies in documenting human-focussed narratives.

This chapter establishes a framework on the reporting of human rights issues such as human trafficking, people smuggling and refugee migration by using UN protocols to define key terms. It examines the complexity of constructing journalistic narratives about these issues, given many of these human rights issues often intersect each other. The chapter examines journalism’s Fourth Estate role in reporting these issues and explores the challenges of this reporting in a globalised world.

This chapter positions journalism for social change amid the broader field of journalism. It looks at the notion of journalism as a calling and draws upon the testimonies of journalism for social change practitioners. It examines journalism’s role as a Fourth Estate and explores notions of objectivity in the production of news. It frames journalism for social change by reviewing other journalisms such as advocacy journalism, precision journalism and pragmatic objectivity. It argues that in the changing news media ecology there are many ‘journalisms’ that are part of journalism for social change.

Surveying his life, Charles Knight recalled the anxiety of his seventeen-year-old self over his future career. The traditional professions—law, church, army and medicine—were closed to him because his father was unwilling to let him leave Windsor. Literature proved unappealing. Instead, Knight junior considered that provincial newspaper journalism was still a vocation. It might not be a profession but it required literary skills and offered locus standi, literally a place of standing, in essence to claim a public voice. It is perhaps unsurprising that by the time Knight wrote his memoirs in 1864 he considered some of the characteristics of journalism to be similar to those of a profession. Fundamental change had occurred across the press in the reduction of stamp duties in 1836 and their abolition in 1855 and in the adoption of new industrial technologies, principally steam printing and the railways. Coupled with seemingly epochal change in the form of the Reform Act of 1832, these changes were celebrated by contemporaries as heralding a new era of the press as the Fourth Estate. Yet the transition from trade to profession is disputed in timing and inchoate in character and process. Whereas Chapter 2 examined the emergence of the provincial press from the perspective of its national centralisation and representation, this chapter focuses on the newspaper proprietors themselves and changes to their working lives and modes of operation.

When Fourth Estate published Financial Times journalist Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani in 2006 it was one of the most highly anticipated British debut novels of the twenty-first century. Having been well received at the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair, it was the subject of a fierce bidding war with, apparently, at least five publishing houses fighting over it; Fourth Estate finally secured the rights after parting with a six-figure advance (Time magazine reported that the advance paid to Malkani as part of a two-book deal was $675,000 (Morrison 2006, np)). An extensive (and expensive) promotion campaign ensued that included a tour of the United States, where the novel was to be handled by Zadie Smith’s editor Ann Godoff. Fourth Estate clearly hoped that Londonstani would receive a level of critical and media attention — and, indeed, achieve sales — comparable to other twenty-first-century British debuts such as Smith’s White Teeth and Ali’s Brick Lane. After all, like Smith and Ali, Malkani was young, Oxbridge-educated, and his novel — like theirs — promised its readers (indeed, by its very title) an insight into the lives of an ethnic minority community in twenty-first-century multicultural London. Moreover, the community into which it purported to offer an insight — that of London’s British Asian ‘rudeboys’ — was one that, having emerged only relatively recently, had not yet been the subject of literary fiction.

In his seminal piece on WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler (2011; also see Benkler’s chapter in this volume) makes a compelling case for why WikiLeaks is a vital element of the networked fourth estate and why we should view its harsh treatment by the US government as a threat to the free press. As he says, the case embodies a struggle for the soul of the Internet, a battle that is being waged through both legal and extralegal means, with major corporate actors — Apple, Amazon, eBay (Paypal), Bank of America (Visa), Mastercard, etc. — using their control over critical Internet resources to lean in heavily on the side of the state and against WikiLeaks.

This chapter explores how the WikiLeaks case intersects with larger trends in the news industry. It begins by describing the economic challenges faced by traditional media and the emerging pattern of what I call the “networked fourth estate.” This new media landscape will likely combine elements of the traditional news media with new forces in media production. “Professionalism” and “responsibility” can be found on both sides of the divide, as can unprofessionalism and irresponsibility. The traditional news industry’s treatment of WikiLeaks throughout this episode can best be seen as an effort by older media to preserve their own identity against the perceived threat posed by the new networked model. As a practical result, the traditional media in the United States effectively collaborated with parts of the Administration in painting WikiLeaks and Assange in terms that made them more susceptible to both extralegal and legal attack. More systematically, this chapter argues that the new, relatively more socially and politically vulnerable members of the networked fourth estate are needlessly being put at risk by the more established outlets’ efforts to denigrate the journalistic identity of the new kids on the block to preserve their own identity.

In 1985, discussing the campaign against Depo-Provera, Christine Dann had written that, ‘Women’s health activists were made painfully aware of what a formidable system they were challenging when doctors, the manufacturing company, the Health Department and ultimately the media closed ranks against them.’ In particular she referred to ‘“the fourth estate”, the media, which claim to be independent of the other powers in society, [but] turn out to share the general reverence for members of the medical profession. A man with M.B.Ch.B. Dip Obsts. [sic] after his name will be given far greater credence than an independent feminist researcher.’1 In the months immediately after the publication of the Cartwright Report, Sandra Coney put this theory to the test. This chapter traces the immediate public responses to the report, as articulated primarily through the popular, medical and nursing press. Coney’s views were given considerable exposure but she also had to defend her ground.

The Russian media system has changed dramatically over the past twenty years. The changes were already initiated well before the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the course of perestroika and glasnost’, print media outlets in particular achieved a remarkable degree of freedom. Although the state and Communist Party remained largely in control of the media sector, censorship was reduced drastically. Newspapers and magazines, slowly but surely, began to acquire more and more characteristics and functions of what is usually called the ‘fourth estate’.

The history of the post-Soviet media offers abundant material for research on the transformation from an authoritarian and closed society to a democratic and open one. The post-Soviet media, as its sixteen-year history shows, have in principle been kept on the leash of the political authorities — it is possible to let go of the leash, or to shorten it. During the perestroika era and in the early 1990s Russian journalists’ understanding of the ‘fourth estate’ had a real sense of political efficacy and empowerment. Yeltsin’s government, fascinated by the spirit of freedom of speech, had given the green light to liberal laws and reforms, and its inability to control the political situation left space for freedom, even anarchy.

In common with much of the western media, and indeed like many other western institutions, such as universities and political parties, the Australian media is relatively less concerned with issues of public interest than was the case two or three decades ago. For example, it is generally true that newspapers and television networks now devote fewer resources to long-term investigative reporting and are more concerned with ‘infotainment’, or merely with entertainment. This is most evident in the arena of commercial television, but the phenomenon of dumbing-down is widespread, even with the national Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the broadsheet newspapers. This retreat of the fourth estate has been accompanied by a massive increase in the resources devoted to government media management and control. These twin trends pose major challenges to the public good. The democratic polity is under threat if the power of governments and commercial interests are not put under the spotlight of a strong independent media. Public scrutiny is essential for democratic and responsible government, but the symbiotic interests of government and media now tend to reduce scrutiny. They both wish to provide the public (especially the politically uninterested floating voter) with quick and relatively inexpensive information that is often pre-packaged and produced by government and corporations — with all the spin that involves.

Most of the essays reprinted in Celtic Revivals are already canonical, having long since established their author as one of the most distinguished (and arcane) critics of Irish writing. Many have been pruned for inclusion here, even though they were models of economy, density and subtlety in their original form, with some inevitable loss of range and power. But in bringing so many of his pieces into one volume, Deane’s London publishers have eloquently demonstrated the originality of his contribution to the study of international modernism.

The voice of the T.U.C. in the 1930s had been a voice in the wilderness. Neither on the issue of unemployment, nor on that of resistance to the Dictators, had the Government heeded its advice. The occupation of Prague by Hitler, in March 1939, at last altered Government policy so far as the external threat was concerned. Belatedly a stand was made against further Fascist aggression, and preparations were speeded up in readiness for the war that now seemed inevitable. The frustrations of the T.U.C. leadership were not at an end, however, for while they had supported resistance and rearmament, they expected that when the Government finally moved to put the nation on a warlike footing it would do so in consultation with them. Given its commitment to resist Fascism the Council was anxious to assist in such preparations, and at a special conference of executives held in London in May 1939 it presented detailed proposals for the organisation of labour in wartime, including the active participation of the unions in the solution of the problems of labour supply. It also proposed the setting up of a tripartite National Advisory Council to the Ministry of Labour, composed of unionists, employers, and civil servants.