Fourth Estate - Final Episode

In the end, you know, it all depends on you. If the programme’s no good, switch off. If television and radio give you rotten local news, read your local papers. If the article or the writer is second rate, complain. Somebody, somewhere, is usually trying to take an intelligent view of things. Why not look for them.

– Brian Priestley's parting advice to viewers

It compliments people’s intelligence. It compliments thinking people. I think, apart from the news, it is the most important programme on TV because, if you like, it is democracy in action.

– Brian Priestley in The Listener, 30 March 1985, page 14