WE USED to be called the Fourth Estate; a class of its own, at least as important as the other three - those three being the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons; or the church, the nobility and the townsmen. Depends on the country.
Now - at leastfor the past two decades - news media in general have become known as the commentariat, and its importance has grown according to its influence, not its value.
"The power of the press" has become a tangible thing, but "the press" is no longer confined to legitimate newspapers and impeccable news sources. If a raving, right-wing internet blogger can achieve "journalist" status - as conferred by the judiciary - then "commentariat" is indeed a valid term. It implies opinion, rather than fact; intentional bias, not non-partisan reporting - and the principle domain of such comment is the ever-burgeoning internet.
It is in cyberspace where people face trial by public opinion, where reputations are shredded by deliberate inaccuracies and people are humiliated daily by comments on social media. That is where name suppression is laughed at and facts only get in the way of a good hatchet job.
Internet commentary has replaced the rack as an instrument of torture and has created a class of self-important bloggers, who pander to basic human instincts and provide the blood for vampires. It's not pretty and it's not journalism. It's amateurish and destructive, and does no one except the blogger a service.
Newspapers and their digital arms continue to serve the public, but too many people are forming their opinions from dodgy sources, believing poor science, skewed statistics and the ravings of those with an agenda.
There will always be a place for editorials, opinion pieces and commentaries, but it must be made clear that that's what they are. News pages or things masquerading as such are not places for slant, bias and political agenda.
