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Yellow journalism is a pejorative reference to journalism that features scandal-mongering sensationalism, jingoism or other unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or individual journalists. More enlightened journalistic professionalism generally considers such behavior beneath its principles. However, the term is used more loosely by media critics -- loosely defined to include officials who come under watchdog journalists' scrutiny (for good reason or not), political partisans who think a story favors their opponents, public relations spin doctors, editors of competing publications, or simply readers who find a particular story or photograph offensive or controversial. (One person may see jingoism where another sees patriotism. See also media bias and talk shows.)

While the term yellow journalism is more than a century old, the gentler pejorative "infotainment" was coined more recently to refer to generally inoffensive news programming that shuns serious issues, but blends "soft" journalism and entertainment rather than emphasizing more important news values. When infotainment involves celebrity sex scandals, dramatic (or dramatized) "true crime" stories and similar trivia, it borders on the tricks of old-fashioned yellow journalism.

Corporate media is another recent pejorative, when applied to news conglomerates whose business interests critics see as counter to the public interest. For example, such media may avoid incisive reporting on influential corporations or limit public information about proposed government regulation of media industries. Collusion between political, business and media worlds sometimes brings allegations of illegal or unethical practices ranging from fraud to antitrust violations.

While bland infotainment and unethical corporate media practices may be considered "yellow" in the sense of "cowardly," the term yellow journalism traditionally refers to news organizations for whom some combination of sensationalism, profiteering, propaganda, journalistic bias or jingoism takes dominance over factual reporting and the profession's public trust. Yellow journalism is not as subtle a concept as media bias.

History: The Yellow Press

Metropolitan newspapers started going after department store advertising in the 1890s, and discovered the larger circulation base the better. The most famous rivalry was in New York City, where stunts and sensationalism were led by Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal. They seem to have equated the sensational reporting of murders, gory accidents and the like with the common man's need to be entertained by subjects beyond dry politics. Their entertainment features included the first color comic strip comics pages. Although the practices called "yellow journalism" were born earlier, they acquired that name when Pulitzer's New York World and Hearst's New York Journal American' warred over ownership of a cartoon character, The Yellow Kid. The character, drawn by different artists, appeared in both 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 more serious newspapers commenting on the excesses 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.

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.

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)
• Joyce Milton, The Yellow Kids: Foreign correspondents in the heyday of yellow journalism." New York: Harper & Row, 1989).
• 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
• News media