The Vanishing Fourth Estate

 

Real journalism is a dying profession. Main-stream media has become conduits for the powerful, mouthpieces, rather than calling them into account. The purpose of the fourth Estate is quite clear: it is the fourth leg of power in a democracy; the Legislator, Judiciary, and the Executive – the free press is vital in a healthy democracy, calling the powerful to answer for their actions – and it seems this vital arm of democracy is vanishing.

Since the media has been bought up by corporations; their journalists have been forced to promote that said corporation's political views. Many of these mainstream journalists will deny this point. One only needs to watch television news to see certain sides of a political stance promoted as truth. In the United States, generally, the two sides of the political coin are MSNBC and Fox News. This pseudo-journalism The so-called Right and Left is nothing less than entertainment and propaganda, pitting their audiences against each other in knee-jerk fashion. The Right will scream about the immigration invasion, illegal aliens taking American jobs away from its citizens. On the Left, they will tell you that all Americans' problems are because of Russian influence. Anyone opposing their neoliberal corporate nonsense is Russian. This “journalism” is not challenging power, but serving power through distraction from the real issues confronting the population.

In Australia, the problem is a little more grey, clouded, but the end-game is the same. Sky News and other major publications such as the Herald Sun in Melbourne, and The Australian Newspaper nationally, are politically right-wing bent, to an obvious and embarrassing extent. This media mentioned is Murdoch owned. Since the Melbourne lock-down, headlines like Andrews is a Dictator, (Labour Premier of Victoria) Victoria has become a Police State, and today, a well-known shock-jock-Murdoch-gimp, Alan Jones, declaring that the pandemic is a hoax! This is not journalism, but propaganda tools for the corporate elite. Unfortunately, this type of irresponsible “journalism” is taken on face value, truths, by their listeners and readers.

So what has happened to journalism? Where are the writers speaking truth to power?

The disappearance of the fourth estate has always been on my mind. It has only become a face-plant issue for me, since the second round of the Julian Assange extradition hearings in London.

Mainstream media are all but silent on the Assange hearings. It is only now that I have the time to read independent media, that I can follow this attack on the fourth estate, the attack on a journalist, Assange, who had the gall to place the powerful to account, by revealing their corruption and war crimes.

The mainstream, understanding their powerful masters, know, witnessing the appalling treatment of a truth-teller, a journalist, Assange, is maintaining their silence. “If we tell the truth, we too will be put into chains and solitary confinement, And hell, I need to keep my job, right?”

The Assange hearings in London is the biggest and most important trial against the fourth estate. The powerful desire to silence and ultimately destroy the press. Yet, again, the MSM is virtually silent, getting the message: speak out, and you'll lose your job and end up in jail.

I always thought it ironic and quite clever, that main-stream “journalists” started a campaign, calling Assange a fake, and not a journalist. What a shit-storm of absolute rubbish. When others knew the truth and refused to print it, Wikileaks did so, and the mainstream news, like The Guardian, printed his revelations to betray him under pressure from their corporate masters. These “journalists” should be hiding in absolute shame.

The Fourth Estate has been systematically destroyed by the oligarchs, the corporate elites. Their relentless disinformation campaign against Wikileaks and Julian Assange, for the most part, have been successful.

The second round of Assange's extradition hearings is a joke. We will only see a semblance of true justice, when it moves forward to Appeal in the higher Courts.

We are at a crossroads, a crucial time in history. The fourth estate is essential to a working and healthy democracy. The powerful and wealthy desire to destroy this important arm of a working and free civilization.

Do not let them win.