CHAPTER 10The New Fourth Estate
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than they all....Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requisite thing is that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite.
—Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist and historian
Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!
—Gold Hat (Alfonso Bedoya), in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
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