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In journalism, yellow journalism is a pejorative reference given to various practices or tendencies of news media organizations which, by the standards of journalistic professionalism, are considered to be unprofessional and detrimental to the principles of journalistic integrity as a whole. The term typically refers to sensationalism in news reporting that bears only a superficial resemblance to the profession of journalism. The term "infotainment" was coined to refer to news programming that blends journalism and entertainment in a way which, critics argue, diminishes the news value and professionalism of the reporting.

The phrase "media bias" is a related term which is used in political rhetoric to assert a broad political bias within news media organizations. Its common usage derives from news media talk shows where an organization's functionaries and personalities tend to direct discussion away from issues in professional journalism to issues in politics.

Meaning

The term, as it commonly applies, refers to news organizations for whom sensationalism, profiteering, and in some cases propaganda and jingoism, take dominance over factual reporting. Most cases tend to be related to journalistic bias, and the endemic practices of particular organizations to operate as mouthpieces, for rather limited and particular allegiances, rather than for the public trust.

Recent accusations of yellow journalism center around media infotainment and corporate media, referring to organizations where business interests supersede the interests of news organizations to accurately report damaging facts about influential corporations and common practices within corporate industry. In certain cases, the links between political, business, and media worlds, are alleged to violate various laws ranging from fraud to antitrust.

In the modern context of near-instant television news coverage, a perceived careless lack of fact-checking for the sake of a breaking news story might be referred to as yellow journalism. Aspects of yellow journalism can vary at the minimum from the sporadic use of unnecessarily colorful adjectives, up to a systematic tendency to report falsehoods as fact. (See also talking points memo.)

Currency

The term has largely fallen into disuse as the media world has grown both in scope and in complexity. Further, because most media outlets have cultural allegiances or business practices that to one degree or other force them to deviate from idealized concepts of reporting, accusations of "yellow journalism" tend to be few.

Print journalists have tended toward building a career reputation of consistent and thorough professionalism, to gain respect and prominence. News anchors, for example, may be chosen not for their skills at journalism, but rather for their presentation, appearance, and personality.

A current perceived rift is therefore more akin to a segmentation according to definitions of "news." The public still attaches to "news" the connotations of "journalism." Because of these developments, the common definition of "news" no longer belongs in the domain of journalists, but to wider television and internet media outlets over a vast spectrum of target issues and audiences. The proliferation of web media has in a certain sense re-validated journalistic ethics: reports that conform best tend to be treated as more authoritative. "Pseudo-news" organizations draw general audiences, who tend to fall into market demographics that each favor particular blends of issues-based entertainment along with their "news."

Reputation and ethics do not necessarily coincide at all times. Well-established institutions such as the New York Times can be at fault. Many journalists find conflicts between their employment and their professionalism as journalists.

The Yellow press

Newspapers increased circulation and readership heavily throughout the 19th century, especially in the United States, and competition between newspapers led to stunts and sensationalism. Rival publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst seem to have equated the sensational reporting of murders, gory accidents, and the like, with the need of the democratic common man to be entertained by subjects beyond dry politics. Their entertainment features also inclulded the first color comic strip comics pages. "Yellow journalism," although born earlier, apparently acquired a name when Pulitzer's New York World and Hearst's New York Journal American' warred over ownership of a cartoon character, The Yellow Kid, who appeared in both these papers in the mid-to-late 1890s. The use of "yellow journalism" as a synonym for over-the-top sensationalism in the U.S. apparently started with this battle of "the Yellow Kid papers." (See also symbolism of yellow.)

Hearst

While most early newspapers tended toward expressing a viewpoint, the prototypical example of yellow journalism was the late 19th century Hearst Newspapers' consistent emphasis on episodes showing a humanitarian crisis among Cubans at the hands of Spanish troops. The Spanish denied the crisis and said Hearst was lying. The stories, combining both a sense of urgency and moral outrage, and Hearst directed his one newspaper, the New York Journal.

Having contributed to rallying public support for the cause for war, Hearst tried to influence the political vote as well. Along with the destruction of the USS Maine, this reporting sparked a public outcry that led to the US to start the Spanish-American War. James Creelman praised the work of the reporters for exposing the horrors of Spanish misrule, arguing, " no true history of the war . . . can be written without an acknowledgment that whatever of justice and freedom and progress was accomplished by the Spanish-American war was due to the enterprise and tenacity of yellow journalists, many of whom lie in unremembered graves." Journalism historians have noted that in 1898 yellow journalism was largely confined to New York City, and that newspapers in the rest of the country did not follow their lead. The key Yellow newspapers, the New York Journal and the World, were not among the top ten sources of news in regional papers. The stories simply did not make a splash outside Gotham.

Americans would soon find themselves invading, occupying, and taking over control of both Cuba and the Philippines from Spain, and Hearst found himself more influential--but he lost much of his personal prestige when one of his columnists, Ambrose Bierce recommended the assassination of President McKinley seven months before he was indeed assassinated.

In fiction

In many movies, sitcoms and other works of fiction, reporters often use yellow journalism against the main character, which typically works to set up the reporter character as an antagonist. Likewise, in the 1997 James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, an evil media magnate tries to start a war between Great Britain and China via sensationalized news stories; in the movie, the villain even alludes to Hearst's role in the Spanish-American War. In Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon, from the Hannibal Lecter series, a sleazy yellow journalist named Freddy Lounds, who writes for the National Tattler tabloid, is tortured and set aflame for penning a negative article about serial killer Francis Dolarhyde.

See also

• Culture of Fear
• Moral Panic
• James Creelman

References

• George W. Auxier, "Middle Western Newspapers and the Spanish American War, 1895-1898," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 26 (March 1940):
• Procter, Ben. William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years, 1863-1910 (1998)
• Morton M. Rosenberg and Thomas P. Ruff, Indiana and the Coming of the Spanish-American War, Ball State Monograph, No. 26, Publications in History, No. 4 (Muncie: Ball State University, 1976) who say Indiana papers were "more moderate, more cautious, less imperialistic and less jingoistic than their eastern counterparts."
• W. David Sloan and James D. Startt, The Gilded Age Press, 1865-1900 (2003)
• Harold J. Sylvester, “The Kansas Press and the Coming of the Spanish-American War, ” The Historian, 31 (February 1969) finds no Yellow journalism influence on the newspapers in Kansas.
• Mark M. Welter, "The 1895-1898 Cuban Crisis in Minnesota Newspapers: Testing the 'Yellow Journalism' Theory," Journalism Quarterly, 47 (Winter 1970): 719—24.

External links

• Not likely sent: The Remington-Hearst 'telegrams' from W. Joseph Campbell's web site.

• Dictionary definition.

• Criticism of journalism
• United States media history
• Pejorative political terms
• Pop culture news media
• News media