Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.  ~Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-WorshipMCTO; The term, “fourth estate,” which refers to journalism, is attributed to the historian Carlyle, though Carlyle himself attributes it to Edmund Burke. In its original sense, the press was the addition to the three estates of the nobility, the church and the common folk, which had parliamentary representation in pre-Revolution France. In its modern sense, however, the media are the addition to the executive, the legislative and the judiciary, which are the three ways by which the people might be heard.