Douglass Cater, in his 1959 "The Fourth Branch of Government" offered the hypothesis that the press had become "a "de facto", quasiofficial "fourth branch of government"" and observed it was the looseness of the American political framework that allowed news media to “insert themselves as another branch of the government”. Cater was "convinced that, insofar as the press did act as a true political player (rather than an unbiased observer of politics), it corrupted itself and went astray from its primary responsibility—to convey important information and to act as a nonpartisan watchdog for the public against all trespassers on their rights."