fourth estate

The fourth estate is the press, one of the four estates proposed by Edmund Burke in the 18th Centuary (amongst parliament, religion and the courts) He said it is 'the most important estate of all'I think new media technology is mainly responsible for the decline of newspaper consumption. The fact that most news we want is available online at the touch of a button is one reason, another is that newspapers just dont have the same appeal as they once did. Before the rapid incline of digital technology, the only way for people to find out things such as weather, sport results etc was through a newspaper (teletext was present albeit limited) but now, all of this information is available online or on a 24hour satellite Tv station at will.Nick lacey says "maybe the internet is already the cyberspace of the fourth estate"?I believe this to mean that new media technologies such as internet and sattelite tv 'the new media' in general has come to replace 'the press' as the fourth estate in this modern age.