The 4th and 5th Estates

There are four basic necessities of man: food, shelter, water and clothing. With these, he is capable of surviving, and in some ways flourishing. When those basic needs are taken care of, man could be content. We argue that there is a fifth possible need in life: education. Education, to me, is one of the most powerful tools of any society. Way back in the 1960s, the government gave priority to education for which 1/3 of the national budget was allocated.

The news media may be the fourth estate and, just like Edmund Burke, we believe that once it was one of the more powerful forces in the country. In a book entitled On Heroes and Hero Worship, written in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle, he wrote: “Edmund Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament, but, in the Reporter’s Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.” Edmund Burke was a noted British politician and thinker from the 19th century.                            

The three estates that Mr. Burke referred to were the so-called estates of the realm; a concept from the Middle Ages. The First Estate comprised the entire clergy and church. The Second Estate encompassed the nobility, while the Third Estate essentially comprised everyone else. In those days, the monarch stood apart and above. The three estates were organized to become advisors and counselors to the monarch, the precursor to the modern congress and parliament. The rigid line between the estates has been, for the most part, discarded in the modern era. Essentially, the Three Estates have become the Establishment. So, some years after the French Revolution and the collapse of the estate system, Mr. Burke (a member of the House of Commons) looked up to the Press Gallery of the House of Commons and said, “Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and it is the most important of all.”

The fifth estate has never been formally identified; some have maintained that it is but an extension of the fourth estate. There is a news magazine that calls itself The Fifth Estate in the United States. Some have identified the new forms of media (internet bloggers) as the fifth estate. We respectfully disagree. Any form of news reporting, in print and publication, is an extension of the fourth estate. Besides the news media, whether internet based or not, has evolved into a member of the establishment. It is no longer the heckler in the peanut gallery or the conduit of information for the people. It has become too enmeshed with the traditional three estates to be, as Sir Edmund Burke termed it, “more powerful than us all.”

The saying used to be that the news reporting is a public trust. Unfortunately, these days we find it difficult to believe, much less trust, what the news media reports. We suppose this is the reason behind the explosion of alternative sources of news. We hope for the day when the news media re-awakens to its responsibilities. The news media may be a public trust, but education is a public right.      

We have long believed that the fifth estate is our students and educators: the future of the country. Students are the dynamo that drives our nation. During Martial Law, they were the most vocal oppositionists to Marcos’s dictatorial policies. During the Vietnam War in the United States, they fought vigorously to bring American troops home. Today, they have been some of the most vocal opponents of the Iraq Occupation. In 42 B.C. the Roman freed slave turned philosopher Publius Syrus wrote, “It is only the ignorant who despise education.”

From experience, the Filipino seeks out education: it is the responsibility of the government and our education system to make sure education is readily available. This way, we must nurture our fifth estate.        

We would argue that the fourth and fifth estates are the most important in the nation today. One is the conscience and guardian of the people, the other is our future. This is why we have dedicated our life to journalism and education.