4 - The Other Estates Question the Fourth

Summary

‘The mass media have become a political power which no longer merely reacts, but acts substantially, and by defining the scope of what is politically possible, as a power in their own right, co-govern indirectly.’

H.M.Kepplinger, 1973

In defending its standing as the institutional Fourth Estate the Australian news media has sought to assert a role central to what one network's corporate lawyer described the ‘maintenance of our democratic society’. This role is not recognised in the Australian Constitution, and indeed the question of whether the Constitution even implies a right to freedom of political expression was only resolved by the High Court in 1994 and has since been subjected to continuing legal debate. Nonetheless James Maclachlan, general counsel for Channel 9, articulated a widespread view when he told a parliamentary committee that the news media played a central political role in representative democracy ‘acting as a watchdog and providing a forum for accountability of the exercise of public and private power’ (Cooney, 1994: 37). Given the Constitution's diffidence on freedom of expression, some reluctance by the judiciary, executive and parliament to allow a watchdog media industry to become Maclachlan's ‘fourth link in the estate’ would be understandable. The other institutions – once also considered estates – accept the aspirations and actions of the news media cautiously.

The strongest Australian public advocate of the democratic purpose of an unfettered press is, somewhat ironically, an academic lawyer: David Flint, professor of law at the University of Technology, Sydney, long-time chairman of the Australian Press Council who in 1997 became chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority. Flint advocates, virtually without qualification, the democratic purpose of a free press, constitutionally empowered to act as the Fourth Estate.