COVID-19 and the Fourth Estate: Asian American Journalists’ Gendered Racial Harms and Racial Activation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Through in-depth interviews, this study explored the voices of Asian American journalists who faced unprecedented stresses due to the racist discourse of Asian Americans as carriers of disease during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Socialized to de-emphasize their vulnerabilities in their professional work, Asian American reporters generally claimed they did not experience racist harms, but further probing revealed indirect harms. Women reporters discussed internalized harms such as elevated anxiety and fear, whereas men reporters referenced only external harms such as racial microaggressions. Women reporters also manifested greater self-reflexivity. The importance of analyzing race and gender in White masculine newsrooms is discussed.

The Commercial Fourth Estate in the 2014–2019 Election Campaigns

The paper presents results of media monitoring during the election campaigns held in Bulgaria between 2014 and 2019 – after the adoption of the new Electoral Code in 2014 until the last local elections in 2019. The main research question is to what extent the media as mediators in the election campaigns know, respect and comply with the legal regulations concerning their activities during such campaigns. The results outline the models of legal socialization of the Fourth Estate in the election campaigns. They also show patterns of compliance and violation of the legal framework. In addition, they reflect the way in which the media work to change the regulations in question. The research sample included between 117 and 180 media service providers in various election campaigns. There were representatives of all media subfields – traditional media, new media, yellow media, brown media, Prokopiev’s media, Peevski’s media, as well as Russian and American “propaganda media”. The period of research includes almost two full election cycles ‒ two parliamentary elections, two European elections, two local elections, and one presidential election which was held after the clear definition of the legal framework for media in the 2014 Electoral Code. No changes were made to this framework during the study and prior to the publication of this paper. This leads to conclusions regarding the electoral legislation and the regulation of the media system in the electoral process.

Tax Policy of the Fourth Estate?

The study deals with questions of the political cooperation of Moravian territorial lord’s towns (the Moravian Fourth Estate) in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. This issue is viewed through the prism of political negotiations about the very high tax burden on the towns. After an outline of the structure of the estate-organized society of the Moravian Margraviate and the role of territorial lord’s—royal and chamber—towns in it, the article introduces the natural and fiscal burdens weighing down the urban organisms and escalating in line with the wars of the Habsburg Monarchy against the expansive Ottoman Empire. The burden on Moravian towns was much heavier than on other segments of the estate-structured society. This was the basis for the towns’ concerted efforts to find relief, which manifested itself during the Fifteen Years’ War with the High Porte in 1593–1606. Surviving sources offer detailed documentation of the 1604 negotiations, when at the initiative of Brno, an attempt was made to counter the pressure of the higher estates that intended to further increase the tax burden on territorial lord’s towns. However, these negotiations illustrate that effective joint action of the town representations was hindered by individual municipalities’ particular interests. Individualism generally exacerbated the towns’ weak position in the political system of the time. In the broader coordinates of early modern Europe, in the Bohemian lands, urban space was less developed and the bourgeoisie was significantly weaker than in their Western and Southern European counterparts. Therefore, the limited coordination of the territorial lord’s towns in the fight against the higher estates did not lead to the desired results.

Media and Democracy: Is Conventional Media Performing the Role of the Fourth Estate of the Realm?

Arguments have emanated on the roles of conventional media in the strengthening of democracy, good governance, and human development in a democratic society. This study discussed and evaluated the conventional media role as the "fourth estate of the realm" by functioning as defenders, watchdogs and providers of accurate information in a democratic society. Social Responsibility Theory, a version of free press theory, was used to underpin the study by providing examples of how the media's actions can affect a democratic society. The study adopted a meta-analysis approach by reviewing numerous published research studies to clarify the role of conventional media as the fourth estate. The content analysis of the reviewed literature revealed that conventional news media roles as check and balance, watch-dogs and adversary have been jeopardised. New media is now strengthened with the ability to displace conventional media as "the fourth estate".

Single Story Sellers Everywhere: Deconstructing Media Reportage on Banditry in Nigeria

Purpose: The media has been described as the fourth estate of the realm because of the huge role it plays in information dissemination and education. However, when the media peddles narratives to make and or mar one group, the media losses its role ethos and principle of balance and neutrality. Therefore, this work attempts to interrogate imbalance media reportage on the issue of north/south divide on banditry. Method: The work is qualitative and employs extant literature as its main source. Findings: The work found out that the media reports the same incidences in different parts of Nigeria in different tones, when violent crimes occur in the north it is simply referred to as banditry but whilst it happens elsewhere, it is called other less derogatory names that do not qualify the extent of the crimes committed. Implications/Originality/Value: The work recommended among other things that the media must uphold its principles of balanced journalism and help peddle narratives that bind rather than divide.

Professionalism and Fetishistic Disavowal in Thai and Chinese Journalism

This study reviews how Thai and Chinese journalists talk about power and truth in relationship to their Fourth Estate role through examining twenty qualitative interviews. Adding to a previous study similarly looking at US and UK journalists it finds that, like their western counterparts, truth is heavily fetishized, being an ideal that journalists admittedly can never reach. However power relations are discussed quite differently, showing how the divergent power structures of the four countries create very different discourses of the power of journalists which are not fetishized to the same extent. This article thus finds that there are limitations to the universality of Žižek’s concept of ideology as fetishistic disavowal (that is, being able to actively admit the limitations of one’s profession as long as one still performs it) in the realm of comparative journalism.

Folly in the Fourth Estate: Editorial Cartoons and Conflicting Values in Global Media Culture

The editorial cartoon is a touchstone for matters of free expression in the journalistic tradition. Since their early inception in the politically charged engravings of 18th-century pictorial satirist William Hogarth to the present day, editorial cartoons have shone forth as signifiers of comic irreverence and mockery in the face of governmental authority and in the more generalized cultural politics of the times. In democratic nations they have been cast as a pillar of the fourth estate. Nevertheless, they—and the cartoonists, critics, commentators, and citizens who champion them—have also long stood out as relatively easy targets for concerns about where the lines of issues such libel, slander, defamation, and especially blasphemy should be drawn. This goes for Western-style democracies as well as authoritarian regimes. In other words, the editorial cartoon stands at a critical nexus of meaning and public judgment. At issue from one vantage is what it means to promote the disclosure of folly as the foolish conduct of public officials and the stupidity of institutions that are thereby worthy as objects of ridicule. From another vantage, there is the matter of what it is to deplore the comicality in journalistic opinion-making that goes too far. To approach editorial cartoons from the standpoints of free expression and press freedoms is to verge on conflicting values of civil liberty in and around the so-called right to offend. This was true in the age of Hogarth. It was true in the days of famed French printmaker and caricaturist Honoré Daumier, who was imprisoned for six months from 1832 until 1833 after portraying Emperor Louis-Philippe in the L Caricature. It is also particularly true today in a global media age wherein editorial cartoons, whether or not they are syndicated by official newspapers, can traverse geographic and other boundaries with relative ease and efficiency. Furthermore, the 21st century has seen numerous cartoon controversies vis-à-vis what many commentators have referred to as “cartoon wars,” leading to everything from high-profile firings of cartoonists (including in the United States) through bans and imprisonments of artists in Middle Eastern countries to the 2015 shootings of cartoon artists at the headquarters of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Indeed, if the threshold of the free press is the killed cartoon, the limit point of the freedom of expression is the killed cartoonist. Hence the importance of looking beyond any one editorial cartoon or cartoonist in order to contemplate the comic spirit in certain historical moments so as to discover the social, political, and cultural standards of judgment being applied to the carte blanche of journalism and the comic license of those using graphic caricatures to freely editorialize their takes on the world—or not.