Search

The historical partnership between whistleblowers and journalists has produced some of the most consequential news stories of the 20th and 21st centuries. However, this partnership has also experienced deep ruptures, most notably after the attacks on 9/11 that reordered the fourth estate's (the press) approach to publishing stories on national intelligence and politically powerful figures. While sensational developments in information accessibility such as WikiLeaks and online document repositories have meaningfully changed the activity of newsgathering and how stories are published, this article instead looks to the more delicate activity of whistleblower rhetoric and its role in recalibrating the place of the fourth estate in a liberal democracy. What follows is an analysis of how a small, vulnerable, and otherwise heterogeneous group uses a rhetoric of praise and blame to achieve a vision of the fourth estate's essential role in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores relationships between media power and older people in Western and non-Western settings, utilising the examples of Australia and Malaysia. Drawing on Fairclough's three-dimensional critical discourse analysis and a dataset of articles from Australian and Malaysian newspapers, it reveals that despite differences in journalistic practices in the two countries there is a common thread of disparate representation of voices of older people and elites in news about older people. This demonstrates the exercise of power by journalists – and the influence of broader media and socio-political environments – in sustaining and reproducing social inequalities, including opportunities for people to have their stories and issues portrayed fairly and accurately. While the lack of critical engagement by Malaysian journalists can be linked to social norms and ideas of Asian-based development journalism, the absence of critical engagement from the Australian news media can be seen as conflicting with their Fourth Estate watchdog role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That the news media should operate as an impartial and responsible "fourth estate" in a democracy is a pervasive ideal, but there are serious obstacles – economic, organizational and political – to its achievement in practice. These obstacles, we argue, may be lower when an outlet reports on politics in another country, which is strategically allied to its own. And, for this reason, the quality of news coverage of that country's politics may be higher in the reporting by foreign media outlets than in the reporting by domestic outlets. This article outlines the theory behind this conjecture and then examines it empirically through a content analysis of media representations of Donald Trump's rise in two non-American outlets, The Australian and The Guardian. Their coverage, our analysis suggests, approximated fourth-estate ideals more closely than did the domestic coverage of Trump's rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, populists have taken charge in Turkey, India and Israel, all previously heralded as exceptional democracies in difficult regions. This moment offers a unique opportunity to explore populism in power outside Europe and the Americas, in three states shaped by deep social, ethnic and religious divisions. This article locates Turkey, India and Israel within a global wave of electorally successful populist movements. It explores how populism can jeopardize democratic choice in deeply divided societies and whether Erdoğan's capture of democracy in Turkey offers a blueprint for the political strategies employed by Modi and Netanyahu. In unravelling parallels between the three administrations, our analysis uncovers a common populist playbook of neoliberal economic policies, the leveraging of ethnoreligious tensions as well as attempts to denigrate independent news media, by portraying it as the "enemy of the people". Although their position on the spectrum between democracy and authoritarianism differs, our analysis reveals striking continuities in the erosion of democracy in Turkey, India and Israel as a result of these policies, thus highlighting the vulnerability of political systems, particularly those of deeply divided societies, to democratic decay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media scholarship has commonly regarded newspapers as an essential element of strong democratic societies: a forum that structures public debate, providing engaged citizens with coherent frameworks to identify, interpret and tackle complex issues. Despite general agreement on the merits of this goal, there is little empirical evidence suggesting it approximates the democratic role historically played by newspapers. We examined three decades of newspaper coverage of chicken meat production in the UK to find evidence relevant to the normative expectations of the democratic role of newspapers as forum for public debate, by means of a two-stage framing analysis of 766 relevant articles from seven outlets. We found mutually disconnected episodic coverage of specific issues whose aggregate effect is consistent with the diffusion rather than the structuring of public debate. Newspapers here afforded polemic rather than the systemic contestation expected. The polemic contestation we found, with diffusion of public debate as an emergent political effect, troubles the assumptions subsequent to which it is possible to argue for the democratic role of newspapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reform of the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo in the 1980s has been often presented by scholars and the reformers themselves as an example of a process of journalism modernization inspired by the US Fourth Estate model. However, a close examination of documents publicized by Folha and members of the management team ahead of the reform suggests that other elements – associated to a Neoliberal and a Leninist view of journalism – performed a role as important as the Fourth Estate as sources of the newspaper's model of journalism. Contrary to the conventional knowledge, this article suggests that the core reason behind of reform was the perception, shared by Folha's managers that they have lost control over the newsroom, and their consequent effort in restoring their authority, rather than merely emulating a foreign model. It is argued that a better understanding of journalism modernization in non-western societies requires going beyond the usual model adoption and model adaptation approaches and exploring a multiple modernities perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As critical issues such as climate change, exploited fisheries, declining human rights, and reconfiguration of political systems inherited at independence increasingly challenge the microstates of Asia-Pacific, approaches to news media and journalism education are also under strain. University-based journalism education was introduced to the South Pacific in Papua New Guinea at independence in 1975 and in Fiji at the regional University of the South Pacific in 1987, while Technical Vocational Educational and Training institutions have been a more recent addition in the region. Some scholars argue there is little difference between Pacific and Western approaches to journalism, or that some journalism schools are too focused on Western media education, while others assert there is a distinctive style of journalism in Oceania with cultural variations based on the country where it is practiced and parallels with some approaches in Asia such as "mindful journalism." This paper examines a "Pacific way" journalism debate which echoes a regional political concept coined by the late Fiji president, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. The paper argues for a greater appreciation of the complexities of media cultures in Pacific nations and proposes a more nuanced, reflexive approach to journalism in the Pacific region. This is reflected in a "talanoa journalism" model that he advocates as a more culturally appropriate benchmark than monocultural media templates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism's relationship with the public has historically rested on an assumption of its Fourth Estate roles and as fulfilling democratic imperatives. The normative dimensions of these ideals have also long been “taken as given” in journalism studies, serving as a starting point for discussions of journalism's public service, interest, and role. As contradictions to these normative ideals expose flaws in such assumptions, a reassessment of this normative basis for journalism is needed. This paper looks to challenge normative legacies of journalism's societal role. Drawing on uses and gratification theoretical frameworks and engaging with communities of practice, it explores how communities understand journalism from both top-down (journalism) and bottom-up (citizen) perspectives. This research considers citizen expectations of journalism and journalists, and evaluates perceptions of journalistic values from the ground up. By employing a community facilitation model, it offers an opportunity for participants from across the community to reassess their own conceptions of the role of journalism. This establishes a better basis to approach the journalism–public relationship that does not advantage historic, normative, or traditional legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aimed at reinforcing the democratic values of freedom of speech and increased diversity in civic access to the means of communication, this paper examines the concept of democracy within an information and communication technology-mediated context. Discussion proceeds with an analysis of orthodox views adopted by Jefferson and the architects of the American Constitution. Building on the Jeffersonian tradition, a critique is presented of present-day, non-transparent constraints on the democratic values of freedom of speech, information access and the structural constrains mitigating unfettered public access to critical information and debate on fundamental social and political issues of the day. The proposed 'custodiary' model for the new Democratic Project is premised on the development of a constitutional framework which encourages information diversity and freedom of access and expression as a way of bringing back 'discourse' into democratic praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of the press, radio, television and other mass media enabled the development of an independent institution: the 'Fourth Estate', central to pluralist democratic processes. The growing use of the Internet and related digital technologies is creating a space for networking individuals in ways that enable a new source of accountability in government, politics and other sectors. This paper explains how this emerging 'Fifth Estate' is being established and why this could challenge the influence of other more established bases of institutional authority. It discusses approaches to the governance of this new social and political phenomenon that could nurture the Fifth Estate's potential for supporting the vitality of liberal democratic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]