What is Yellow Journalism?

Journalism that exploits, distorts, or exaggerates the news to create sensations and attract readers.

Inflammatory, irresponsible reporting by newspapers. The phrase arose during the 1890s, when some American newspapers, particularly those run by William Randolph Hearst, worked to incite hatred of Spain, thereby contributing to the start of the Spanish-American War. Newspapers that practice yellow journalism are called yellow press.

Yellow journalism is a term given to any widespread tendencies or practices within media organizations that are detrimental to, or substandard from the point of view of, journalistic integrity. "Yellow journalism" may for example refer to sensationalized news reporting that bears only a superficial resemblance to journalism. Journalistic professionalism, as now understood, is the supposed antidote. Today the phrase media bias is often used instead of "yellow journalism", with similar but subtly different meaning.

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.

There is a very long history. 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 refered 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.

In 1898, newspapers provided the major source of news in America. At this time, it was common practice for a newspaper to report the editor's interpretation of the news rather than objective journalism. If the information reported was inaccurate or biased, the American public had little means for verification. With this sort of influence, the newspapers wielded much political power.

In order to increase circulation, the publishers of these papers often exploited their position by sponsoring a flamboyant and irresponsible approach to news reporting that became known as "yellow journalism."

Though the term was originally coined to describe the journalistic practices of Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst proved himself worthy of the title. Today, it is his name that is synonymous with "yellow journalism."