SAYLES: Searching for the Fourth Estate

I’ve been on an unfulfilled and unfulfilling quest to track down any sign of life for a most important consequence of the United States Constitution.

The First Amendment guarantees that as long as there is a United States of America, there shall be freedoms of religion, of speech, of the press, of peaceful assembly, and of the right to petition the federal government for redress of grievances.

It was not by constitutional accident that the Founders addressed freedom of speech and freedom of the press as separate and distinct rights. It was an acknowledgment of the critical role and the magnitude of the responsibility the free press plays in American society.

American journalism has been referred to as the Fourth Estate, or more clearly as our “fourth branch of government,” due to its si