THE FOURTH ESTATE

The phrase the fourth estate is generally used to refer to newspapermen. In fact, it is the subtitle of the trade magazine of the newspaper business, Editor & Publisher. The fourth estate gets its name from a famed comment of Sir Edmund Burke in the British Parliament. He distinguished the assorted estates of the dominion: the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons-the powers that embrace in their hands the control of British governments. Then Burke added, pointing to the press balcony, “And yonder sits the Fourth Estate, more important than them all.”