The unseen pillar of democracy

 Judiciary, Executive and Legislative are called as pillars of democracy. They are bound to certain rules and regulations. These are bound to follow seniors. Before taking up any case there are numerous procedures one has to follow. They are not free to solve a case independently they have people to assist them, constitution to protect them and luxuries waiting for them. We all often forget about the forth pillar of our democracy. Journalism. It is often underrated and overlooked as vital component of our democracy. Accept it or not, just like other pillars, Journalism upholds the spirit of democracy, by ensuring transparency and accountability of information to the public.

First time people received a news was 130 BCE.  The daily events, called acta dilurna in Latin, were carved into stone and put up in public. People could read about births, deaths, marriages and results of legal trials.

German man named Johannes Gutenberg invented a machine that created many pages for texts, very quickly. He called this machine as 'Printing Press'. In 1453 he started to use his printing press. This changed the whole way of how people received the news. However, government still controlled the writers.

In Europe in the 1620s, people wrote single paper newsletters, called Corantos, writing about wars and interesting topics. Government censored them!

In England in 1644 , John Milton wrote and published Areopagitica ( A speech calling for freedom of press).

In 1665, The Oxford Gazette, the first  English newspaper  was printed.

1690, First newspaper in the America, Public Occurences.

For most of the 18th century government still controlled what people wrote. For example, in USA in the year 1722 Benjamin Franklin became editor of the New England Courant, because his older brother was jailed due to false allegation of government. They accused him of writing things that were not true.

Later in 18th century Edmund Burke was giving his speech on three estates where he mentioned Journalism as the forth estate.

In early 20s a new type of Journalism called, Investigative Journalism was discovered.

1920s - News Radio

     

1950s -  Televison news 

 1990s - Online newspapers

From news carved on walls to news on our smartphones we have come a long way. However, the press is not free. Journalists are killed for their fair reporting, some are jailed for doing their work and those who remain are swayed by various agendas. This is modern- day journalism. While everybody acknowledges media they fail to recognise its significance. There was a time when people watched movies for entertainment and they used to read/watch  news for topics of national interest.  Things have changed! What was once called the fourth pillar of democracy is now just rubble. Most of the journalist are just fulfilling their needs regardless of ethics, that's their job now. Everybody is doing their jobs. No questions asked. Humans have their selfish needs but when you are at the stage where your words influence number of citizens it becomes one's responsibility to weild that authority wisely. Talking about some dishonest journalists there is another side of the coin too. There are journalists who are assassinated, threatened or jailed. And no, not only  criminals do it but there are some bureaucrats and politicians   doing it.  

With rise of social media and citizen journalists, misinformation in public has become a major concern, and it potentially defines public trust on journalists. The rapid spread of fake news online, through social media has made it easy to cater audience for false information.  Journalists must play a crucial role in combating these fake news and misinformation in order to maintain public trust on them. Easier to say than to do!

Influence of corporate and media ownership is binding press freedom. When media has influence from the corporates and bureaucrats it has several implications. The consequences sounds like - setting of personal agendas, influence on investigative journalism and crime reporting, controlling narratives and commercialization.  To mitigate implications of concentrated media we need to support free journalism. Journalism has power to change narratives and today's bureaucrats and corporate knows this therefore the want to control the media. Yet, citizens are unaware of the fact or they just don't want to acknowledge this field as they acknowledge other fields.

Journalism gives you freedom to work in one's own genre. It used to have people's trust which lacks in today's journalism. A true journalist is not  motivated to become rich, they seek justice. They want to right wrongs, hold officials accountable, be silver lining amongst dark cloud and explain a complex world in simple way. They want to help get the best truth out.  Journalism is not as it seems in today's age. It isn't limited as it is in modern day. Things have change yet we all seek for that one positive revolution in modern-day-journalism. Earlier, people used to fight for press freedom and now that we have a bit of freedom we lack that decency like earlier days.