WEBSITE 1:

Media as the "Fourth Estate"Access to information is essential to the health of democracy for at least two
reasons. First, it ensures that citizens make responsible, informed choices rather than acting out of
ignorance or misinformation. Second, information serves a "checking function" by ensuring that elected
representatives uphold their oaths of office and carry out the wishes of those who elected them.
In the United States, the media is often called the fourth branch of government (or "fourth estate"). That's
because it monitors the political process in order to ensure that political players don't abuse the
democratic process.
Others call the media the fourth branch of government because it plays such an important role in the
fortunes of political candidates and issues. This is where the role of the media can become controversial.
News reporting is supposed to be objective, but journalists are people, with feelings, opinions and
preconceived ideas.
How Media Helps Shape Public Opinion
A clever choice of words can make things seem different than they are. For instance, during the Vietnam
War, the Defense Department of the United States used many misleading phrases in news reports.
Instead of "forced transfer of civilians" they said "relocation", and instead of "lies" they said "elements in
the credibility gap." By using carefully chosen phrases, the Defense Department made their war efforts
seem less harmful to the people in the United States. They aren't "vouchers", they are "opportunity
scholarships"; it's not "tax cuts", it's "tax relief."
If we didn't know better, we'd think that the dogs have gone crazy and started attacking humans in
unprecendented numbers (ala Hitchcock's "The Birds"), but in fact dog attacks on people are down . It's
simply that the Diane Wipple story has drawn public attention (and media focus) to the dog-bites-man
story.
Media's Influence on Politics
The influence of the mass media affects politics in the United States greatly. The public's point of view is
changed by the way the news is reported. When the public's views are affected, the voting polls are too.
In turn, when votes are changed, different public officials are elected. The government officials are the
men and women who make the laws and generally run the country. The mass media is at the beginning of
a long chain, but nonetheless, the media has a powerful effect on politics in the United States.
Role of the media during the election cycle and beyond...

Primary season: Importance of doing well in Iowa and New Hampshire...goal is not

necessarily to win, but to win over expectations (Clinton in '92). Candidates who exceed
expectations win, those who fall short lose.

Horserace coverage: typical of media coverage of elections. Not coverage of issues, but

report of who's ahead, stats, and %s of public opinion.

Sound bytes: contribute to problem. We now expect brevity. We expect issues and
campaigns to be summed up in seconds. No time for content in a 10 second sound byte.
"Line of the Day" begun by Reagan WH. Pre-empted the press. Presidential
manipulation of the press by setting the agenda before the media could decide what to cover.
Importance of a good White House Press Secretary: The creation of this position
represents the importance of maintaining a good relationship with the people and the press.
Theodore Lowi describes the Press Secretary as "the apex of a huge public relations apparatus in
the executive branch which devotes an extraordinary amount of staff, resources, and time to
generating a positive image of the president." Dee Dee Myers, Mike McCurry: important to build
good relationship with White House Press Corps. Tough job: must balance loyalty to pres and
appearance of being "on board" with maintaining trust and respect of press (so that they will
cover you favorably.)
Consequences of "media politics"...

Decline in party influence-foremost among the changes brought on by the new media

politics is the declining influence of political parties, particularly in presidential elections. During
the 40s, when social scientists first investigated the impact of media on the outcome of
presidential elections, party allegiance was the most important determinant of the vote. Today, the
candidate as a personality is the primary determinant, and party affiliation comes in close to last.
When voters base their decisions on a candidate's personality, character, or stand on the issues,
the media becomes a very significant player b/c they are the chief source of info about these
matters. As image becomes more important, the role of parties naturally declines. When voters
can see and hear candidates in their own living rooms, they can make choices that differ from
those made by the party. The role of party as campaigner for the candidate has become almost
obselete. More candidates enter the races and campaign on their own strengths, raising their own
money and building their own organizations.
Increase in power of media in elections and campaigns (media as "king makers")- more
than ever, media personnel can influence the selection of candidates and issues during election
time. The selection process begins in the primaries when newspeople, on the basis of as yet
slender evidence, must predict winners and losers in order to narrow the filed of eligibles.
Concentrating on the front runners in public opinion polls makes the media's task more
managable, but it often forces trailing candidates out of races prematurely. Example of little
known Georgia Governor, Jimmy Carter. NBC called Carter "the man to beat." Afterwards, he got

the covers of Newsweek and Time. Conversely, the media has been known to destroy
candidacies: Joe Biden and Gary Hart in 1988.
Marketing imperative- the type of candidates that emerge has also been altered by the
new media politics. Political recruiters have become extremely conscious of a candidate's ability
to look impressive and to perform well before the cameras. People who are not telegenic are
eliminated from the pool of available recruits. Abraham Lincoln's rugged face probably would not
have passed muster. Franklin Roosevelt, who was keenly aware of the likely harmful effects of a
picture of him in a wheelchair (which would make him appear weak), never allowed photos to be
taken while he was being lifted to the speaker's rostrum.
The post-modern campaign- mass media coverage has become the campaign's pivotal
point. Campaigns are arranged for the best media exposure before the largest suitable audience.
To attract media coverage, candidates concentrate on press conferences, talk show
appearances, or trips to locations that serve as good backdrops for photo ops. Appearances on
various entertainment shows are now routine (anyone remember Clinton blowing his sax on
Arsenio?) Candidates plan their schedules to dovetail with media coverage habits. They spend
disproportionate amounts of time campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire where media
coverage is heavy.

WEBSITE 2:

The 4th Estate as the 4th Branch

Question
Why is it that, while the media is referred to many times as the 4th branch of government, it is not explicitly stated as such? Is
this something that would be or has been up for consideration? What arguments would favor or oppose this amendment to the
body of our Constitution?

Answer
Calling the media the "4th branch of government" is a rhetorical device, not a serious statement of fact. The point is to emphasize
that the press is not a mere passive reporter of the facts, but a powerful actor in the political realm.
Calling it "the 4th branch" not only emphasizes the amount of power it wields, but is often meant to suggest that that power is not
under the control of the people in the same way that their elected representatives are. The implication is that it acts as a shadow
government, unaccountable to the people, but is instead beholden to special interests of one sort or another, or that the press's
supposed separation from the government is largely an illusion. The corollary is that the press sometimes menaces rather than
protects, or controls rather than serves, the public.

The Phrase "4th Branch of Government"

The "4th branch of government" is a phrase that appears to have first surfaced among critics of FDR's New Deal in the 1930s. It
referred not to the press, but to the collection of new Federal regulatory agencies with top officials appointed by the Executive
Branch. Their function was quasi-judicial, and they were not directly accountable to the people.
Identifying the "4th branch of government" as the press came a decade or so later. Hartford Courant editor Herbert Brucker, in
his 1949 book, Freedom of Information, devoted some ink to it. He explicitly equated "the 4th Estate" (another, older phrase

often applied to the press, which has its own linguistic history derived from British and French politics) with "the 4th branch of
government."
Journalist Douglass Cater entitled his 1959 book on the practical relationship between the government and the press, The Fourth
Branch of Government. Both authors were convinced that, insofar as the press did act as a true political player (rather than an
unbiased observer of politics), it corrupted itself and went astray from its primary responsibilityto convey important
information and to act as a nonpartisan watchdog for the public against all trespassers on their rights.
Lately, some political writers have used the phrase, "the 4th branch of government," to mean the voters' power to form law
directly through petition or referendum, as in California.

Freedom of the Press

The 1st Amendment of the Constitution says, Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom ... of the press. The
Constitution establishes a government with three branches, but it does not establish a press or a media. What it does do is prohibit
the government from trying to control what people say, either in the press (and by extension in other forms of media) or outside
the press.
The core principle is that in the U.S., as distinct from many other countries, the media (and the people in general) are not
established or granted rights or status at the discretion or pleasure of the government. Rather, the government's power is entirely
derived from the "just consent of the governed." The point of the 1st Amendment is to make sure that the government does not
overreach itself by trying to limit the basic rights of the people, such as their right to speak freely, including their right to criticize
the government. The government does not grant that right. It already exists, no matter what the government might say or do.
The 1st Amendment states the consequence of that fact: Congress cannot limit freedom of speech. The Constitution recognizes
the press's freedom as fundamental and prevents the government from infringing on it.
Another way of demonstrating this: The government, barring a few exceptional situations, has not put itself in the business of
funding the press, much less actually running a news organization (rather than a public information office). One exception is the
grant money that partially funds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio (and fully funds international
broadcasting entities such as Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia).
Another exception is Voice of America, the government agency that broadcasts radio and television abroad. VOA is prohibited by
the Smith-Mundt Act, however, from disseminating its programming directly to the American people. This was partly out of fear
that an administration would find it a useful tool for selling itself to its own constituents and thereby unfairly consolidating its
own power against its political opposition.

Potential Upside of Making the Press a Separate Branch of the Government

Incorporating the press into the government would make the media more accountable in some sense for what it says and does,
and would make it less dependent on large commercial interests for success. It would likely make the media more careful and
guarded about what it said. No matter what your political perspective, it is not difficult to think of instances where that would
have been a good thing.
Politicians and journalists have recently talked about giving government subsidies to news organizations suffering from a
dwindling subscriber base and shrinking audience or advertising revenues. This idea they justify under the notion that the press or
the media is a kind of public service or utility and is valuable to the general welfare of the country. This would be an of extension
of the idea of the electromagnetic broadcast spectrum as a public resource that is allocated and protected by the Federal
Communications Commission.

Potential Downside of Making the Press a Separate Branch of Government

Trying to bring the press under the umbrella of the government, even as a separate "branch," would join the interests of the press
with the interests of the government that funded it, making it less likely to criticize the government. The press, then, as a
government entity, would be perceived (and truly function) as a propaganda ministry, a partisan political tool.
This would jeopardize the press's credibility as objective, making it less valuable to the public. It would also introduce a largely
unpredictable period of experimentation, resetting the most fundamental structure of the government by adding a 4th branch. It
would also re-frame the relationship of the government to the people, from one in which the government is granted its limited
power by the people (who always maintain their rights), to one in which the government is the granter and administrator of rights,
such as, here, freedom of speech.
There are many countries in the world where this is the model. Many of them have media that are largely or even exclusively
government-run (or at least government-funded). Despite the occasional desire of politicians or government bureaucracies to
control a media that annoys or criticizes, the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press have largely
prevented such action here.

Exceptions to the Freedom of the Press

By law, the press is limited in its content when such content would be libelous, obscene, seditious (leading to "imminent lawless
action"), or would threaten national security or the public safety. Restrictions on "hate speech" also limit the freedom of the
media, as do copyright laws. It has been along the border of these limitations that skirmishes between the press and the
government have been fought for nearly the entire history of the U.S.
Such skirmishes began in earnest with the passage of the Sedition Act of 1798, which, for a time, made it an offense "To write,
print, utter or publish, or cause it to be done, or assist in it, any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government of
the United States, or either House of Congress, or the President, with intent to defame, or bring either into contempt or disrepute,
or to excite against either the hatred of the people of the United States, or to stir up sedition, or to excite unlawful combinations
against the government, or to resist it, or to aid or encourage hostile designs of foreign nations."
Nevertheless, it is a sign of how little support the Constitution gave to the government to define for itself the content of what the
press could publish that 1st Amendment cases involving questions of the freedom of the press were decided in what historian
Lucas Powe calls a "haphazard" fashion until the 1964 Supreme Court decision of The New York Times v. Sullivan, which
clarified what constituted libel and what did not.

EVIDENCE 3:

Fourth branch of government

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the American political system, the fourth branch of government refers to a group that
influences the three branches of government defined in the American Constitution(legislative,
executive and judicial). Such groups can include the press (an analogy for the Fourth Estate),
the people, and interest groups. U.S. independent administrative government agencies, while
technically part of the executive branch (or, in a few cases, the legislative branch) of
government, are sometimes referred to as being part of the fourth branch.
In some cases the term is pejorative because such a fourth branch has no official status. The
term is also widely used as a picturesque phrase without derogatory intent. Where the use is
intended to be pejorative, it can be a rhetorical shorthand to illustrate the user's belief in the
illegitimacy of certain types of governmental authority with a concomitant skepticism towards the
origin of such authority.
Contents

1 The press

2 The people

3 Interest groups

4 Administrative agencies

5 Other "fourth branches"

6 Popular culture

7 References

The press[edit]
The concept of the media or press as a fourth branch stems from a belief that the news media's
[1]
responsibility to inform the populace is essential to the healthy functioning of the democracy.
The phrase "Fourth Estate" may be used to emphasize the independence of the press
[2]
particularly when this is contrasted with the press as a "fourth branch".

The people[edit]
Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion, The People are the fourth branch that governs the
government. The People govern the other three Branches in the form of a Common Law
Peoples Grand Jury. The grand jury is mentioned in the Bill of Rights, but not in the body of the
Constitution. It has not been textually assigned, therefore, to any of the branches described in
the first three Articles. It "is a constitutional fixture in its own right". In fact the whole theory of its
function is that it belongs to no branch of the institutional government, serving as a kind of buffer
or referee between the Government and the people (United States v. Williams, 1992).

Interest groups[edit]
In an article titled "The 'Fourth Branch' of Government", Alex Knott of the Center for Public
Integrity asserted in 2005 that "special interests and the lobbyists they employ have reported
spending, since 1998, a total of almost $13 billion to influence Congress, the White House and
[3]
more than 200 federal agencies."

Administrative agencies[edit]
The administrative agencies that are funded from public money may exercise powers granted
by Congress. Without appropriate controls and oversight this practice may result in
abureaucracy (in the original literal sense). Some critics have argued that a central paradox at
the heart of the American political system is democracy's reliance on the what the critics view as
undemocratic bureaucratic institutions that characterize the administrative agencies of
[4]
government. An argument made for calling administrative agencies a "fourth branch" of
government is the fact that such agencies typically exercise all three constitutionally divided
powers within a single bureaucratic body: That is, agencies legislate (a power vested solely in
[5]
the legislature by the Constitution) through delegated rulemaking authority; investigate,
execute, and enforce such rules (via the executive power these agencies are typically organized
under); and apply, interpret, and enforce compliance with such rules (a power separately vested
[6]
in the judicial branch). Additionally, non-executive, or "independent" administrative agencies
are often called a fourth branch of government, as they create rules with the effect of law, yet
may be comprised at least partially of private, non-governmental actors.

Other "fourth branches"[edit]

Federal Reserve (central bank of the United States)

Office of the Independent Counsel (or its successor the U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Special Counsel)

Office of Personnel Management (The civil service)

Freemasons (during the 19th century when Americans thought secret societies had

immense power)

Popular culture[edit]

In The Simpsons episode "Sideshow Bob Roberts" (originally aired October 9, 1994),

Springfield's leading conservative talk radio host, Birch Barlow (a parody of leading
American conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh) welcomes listeners to his show by
introducing himself as the "fourth branch of government" and the "51st state."

In 2007, the short-lived ABC drama-thriller Traveler, the fourth branch existed as a

secret society created by the Founding Fathers and composed of the oldest families in
theUnited States, whose purpose is to implement checks and balances on the U.S.
government to guide the true course of America.

Rapper and political activist Immortal Technique has a track entitled the "4th branch," in

which he applies the role of said branch to the media in a pejorative manner. He implies in
this track (or pretty much explicitly states) that the US media of the time acts more like
another part of the government instead of its own independent entity, and he gives some of
his reasons for this belief on the track.

"4th Branch" is also the name of a record label - 4th Branch Records, owned by DJ

Prezzident, based in Columbia, Missouri.