Does the media still deserve the accolade the Fourth Estate? Is appreciating the general performance of significant sections the concept of an illusion or outmoded or anachronistic or a simple nightmarish joke? That is the moot question.

Certainly, the thoughts that inspired the distinctive honour of the media as the Fourth Estate were noble and patriotic. Indeed, throughout history, those positive thoughts have re-echoed. When Thomas Jefferson, the author of the United States Declaration of Independence, stated that: “Were it left for me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter”, he was pointedly articulating the greatest recognition that the media should command any genuine democratic governance structure that seeks the interest of the nation and her people.

Dr Audrey Gadzekpo captures this noble media objective in her piece in the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development Critical Perspective Number 22 as follows: “The media earn their position as the fourth estate because the industry complements other key democratic institutions, such as the executive, legislature and judiciary. As part of the vertical accountability system of governance, they place a key role in checking those in power .... Without the media’s facilitating role, it would be difficult for citizens to make informed decisions, influence the political process and in general participate more meaningfully in governance”.

And when Adlai Stevenson once observed that “The Free Press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty”, he was hammering home the cherished positive attributes of the media.

Surely, the need for a principled, vibrant, fiercely independent media can hardly be overemphasised. However, against the relief of our continuing experiences in the country, can we sincerely confirm that the media have lived up to those expectations on a sustained basis?

Gregg Pascal Zachary has some respectable views on the subject. “But as experience has shown, the independence of the media can be fragile and easily compromised. All too often, governments shackle the media. Sometimes control by powerful private interests restricts reporting. Low levels of illiteracy, human capital and technology can also limit the positive role the media can play. And we have seen the impact of irresponsible reporting and manipulation .... witnessed the devastating effects of war propaganda in Rwanda”.

I recall the lamentations of a defeated politician who became the deserving victim of a diabolical propaganda mechanism he had established to destroy his perceived enemies when he was in power. “The free press can be a double-edged dangerous weapon in the hands of unscrupulous, unthinking and corrupted media”. He was right. How I wished he had realised this when he was in power!!

Actually, the woes of that aggrieved politician was not a new page in the book of perfidious and yellow journalism.
It goes a long way back as the murky shadows of a contaminated media freedom in many ways.

Benjamin Franklin commented on this years ago when he observed that: “If by the liberty of the press, we understand merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please, but if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I own myself willing to part with my share of it whenever our legislatures shall please to alter the law and shall cheerfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others for the privileges of not being myself”. There is a lot we can learn from that.

Many discerning people should be able to confirm that we have plenty of work to do within sections of the media if we should harvest the fruits of the Fourth Estate.

It is in that spirit that I captured the scenario rather brutally, I must say, in my book, Bogus Informants ... Nation wreckers”.
“If you have a situation where powerful or vicious economic and political interests can exploit the poverty, inflate the ego, manipulate the vanity, pamper the cheapness, massage the ignorance or the illiteracy of some media people to wage vicious public relations campaigns against their adversaries and opponents, then wherein lies the integrity of the Fourth Estate? It becomes a sham and a classic case of perfidy and perdition at its apogee”. This was written in 2004.

The situation has not changed significantly.
The 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary elections provided the invidious opportunity for sections of the media to drown in incredible depths of unprofessional filth and moral decadence.

So should we take the Fourth Estate seriously enough when some of its members openly declare and display an inflexible partisan stance on national issues, no matter how worthless that position? Or whether that affronts or vandalises the national interest?

Worse still, when their performance mindlessly creates or fuels security tensions, especially when some of them, parading as know-all newspaper reviewers and all-wise social commentators, consistently and mischievously pursue skewed agendas that subject decent people to undignified harassment. The rather loose expressions “blackmailing media terrorism” points to that situation.

Recognising the nexus between media and security, I observed in my book, Ghana: National Security, as follows: “A flawed security service exposed to the manipulation and control of the political system is as much a threat to national security as a compromised, corrupt, irresponsible or mischievous press”.

The fact should be stressed quite clearly that our democratic development cannot be enhanced if some elements of the Fourth Estate remain so acutely partisan and, therefore, becoming willing stooges of stomach politicians and nation wreckers.

It is time for the media themselves to do a reality check, institutionally and individually, to salvage the shrinking image of the Fourth Estate. And that is why I was tickled when I read the scathing views expressed in the November 11, 2009 issue of the Palaver newspaper by columnist, Asakramitoga. Hear him.

“We always trumpet ourselves as the fourth estate of the realm, but we are staffed with illiterates, untrained persons, charlatans, yes-men, impostors and soli-minded false journalists, even in the persons of some editors who cannot write simple editorials or common news items, disgracing this noble profession, which is envy to others in other countries”.