The Fourth Estate: Reporting on the White House: Three Perspectives
Major political figures spend enormous amounts of time directing the attention of the press toward issues they consider important. This intense concern with "managing" the news makes the relationship with the press adversarial, however professionall...
The Fourth Estate: License to Blame
Public officials and public bodies like Congress are criticized by the press. As Barbara Sinclair points out, "You want a skeptical media, but too often the media goes across the line and interprets everything that's done in Washington through the l...
The Fourth Estate: Need to Redefine Journalism in the 21st Century, The
In the fast-paced world of the news room, accuracy and speed are natural enemies. Story decisions are often based on fragments of information as former CNN Vice President Ed Turner explains. The best news organizations do place a premium on accuracy...
The Fourth Estate: Controlling the Message
A free press is essential to a democratic society. It alerts citizens to events that will affect their lives and provides a channel through which political leaders can reach the public. Congress received as much press attention as the President in t...
The Fourth Estate: First Amendment Protections Require Greater Public Responsibility
Many critics argue that the special protection and benefits the news media receive demand a greater degree of public responsibility. As Mickey Edwards puts it, "Did the founders intend to protect this business enterprise that prints newspapers inste...
The Fourth Estate: Common Carrier Role Impeded by Media Aggressiveness
The tendency of the media to carry the watchdog role to the extreme impedes its ability to function effectively as a common carrier. Civil servants, hostile because of the perception that the press misrepresents reality, are very guarded in their re...
The Fourth Estate: Winning the News Game
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, reporters and cameras converge on late-breaking news events with one thought in mind: winning the news game. In the 1950s and 1960s, most people's access to political information came from three television...
The Fourth Estate: Role of the Press as Watchdog, The
The press's role in protecting the public from corrupt officials and practices took on new meaning in the 1960s and '70s. Correspondent Marvin Kalb talks about his experience covering the Vietnam War. The idea that Presidents Nixon and Johnson lied ...
The Fourth Estate: Conflictual Nature of Politics Linked to Press, The
Is the competitive nature of the press changing the way public affairs are conducted or just the way we look at government? Politics has become more strident and rancorous, a dynamic many blame on the media. Too often politicians argue from a confli...