The 21st century’s Fourth Estate amidst global flux

Over the centuries, societies commonly spoke of the three ‘estates’. The First Estate was the clergy, who gave the moral framework, the narrative for the society to behave and function. The Second Estate consisted of the nobility and business people who held power and the third was the commoners or citizens.
Much later, the Fourth Estate was created for the press and media, who were expected to question and keep the power in check. The prominence of the Fourth Estate grew in the 18th-19th centuries in France and Britain, when journalists in press galleries began to shape politics as much as officials in power.
In the 21st century, there is a transformative change in the narrative of the fourth estate and the first three estates also. The First Estate, which was considered responsible for designing society's moral framework, is now influenced by algorithms and artificial intelligence that set the narrative.
The Second Estate of people of nobility and influence is also the tech company leaders who have created the algorithms themselves, so we see the blurring of lines between the first two estates.
The Third Estate, the common people, are experiencing attitudinal shifts, evident in their transactional approach to life, short attention spans, unwillingness to deal with inconvenience and discomfort; and growing opinionated perspectives. The Third Estate seeks conformity from the Fourth Estate and is rather unappreciative of its watchdog role. This nudges the press and media to tune the narrative to the likes of the Third Estate or face financial viability issues.
The press and media have to strike a fine balance between trust, credibility and survival in a fast-paced, trust-deteriorating industry. The Fourth Estate must work within the cultural context of the ecosystem and be comfortable with accepting and reporting the reality, even if it does not align with pressroom perceptions and background.
The Fourth Estate is in a state of transition, highly influenced by technology, commercialisation, polarisation, fake news, disinformation, misinformation, influencers versus journalists and artificial intelligence. A June 2024 Gallup “confidence in institutions” poll found that trust in newspaper content is 16 per cent and in television content is 12 per cent. The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2025 states that 4 out of 10 people now say they sometimes or often avoid the news.
Distrust of the media is high and it is of paramount importance to regain that trust. In the digital age, where news and information sources extend beyond newspapers and television, the dilution and misinterpretation of reality are amplified by the narrative of artificial intelligence. Despite the growing fragmentation of sources of new channels and platforms, dependence on these intermediaries continues to grow. According to the Digital News Report 2023, younger generations pay more attention to celebrities and influencers than to journalists. The Fourth Estate needs to regain its credibility by being more transparent and expressing its difficult opinions about the sources of information. Information must be more evidence-based rather than opinion-based.
There are several challenges and pressures on the Fourth Estate; a quintessential example is the BBC episode. Following controversy over the editing of a speech by US President Donald Trump for a Panorama programme, which critics claimed misrepresented his remarks, BBC Director-General Tim Davie and the company's chief of news resigned in late 2025.
Since then, Trump has filed a multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against the BBC, escalating a disagreement about editorial judgment into a high-stakes legal and political conflict with a public broadcaster. In response, the BBC appointed former Google executive Matt Brittin as its new director-general at the beginning of 2026, demonstrating how even flagship news organisations are looking to big-tech leadership and data-platform expertise as they struggle for relevance, revenue and trust in a hostile information ecosystem, blatantly proving the blurring of spaces between the Second and the Fourth Estate.
Now, in the 21st century, the Fourth Estate, commonly known as the press and media, has a paramount responsibility to investigate, verify and explain, serving as the voice of diverse stakeholders without bias and with credibility.
Despite pressures and challenges from various agents of change, such as commoner behaviour and mistrust, collapsing media revenues, polarisation and organised disinformation, the Fourth Estate must provide more evidence, unbiased facts and information, even if it might challenge authorities within the given context.