How Yellow Journalism Attacked Objectivity
The title of this essay could have been something more simple, such as 'Yellow Journalism' or 'The Yellow Press and Objectivity'. However, Yellow Journalism is all about huge, bold headlines to attract readers. It is a term used to describe the style of exaggerated, exploitative and sensational newspaper reporting. Besides, Yellow Journalism has little regard to facts and therefore the truth is often misrepresented or not told at all. It is a negligent way of reporting with the aim to attract the reader's attention. In addition, one could often find pictures, drawings and comics in "yellow newspapers", since many believed that one picture was equal to a thousand words. (Campbell, W.J.).
A common way to attract readers in Yellow Journalism is with sensational headlines. On the front page of "yellow newspapers", one can often find words such as "glory", "death" and "slaughter" to generate curiosity. (source) For example, The New York Journal of February 4 1899 had the headlines: " Awful Slaughter" and "Our Troops at Manila Killed the Filipinos by the Thousands -40 Americans Killed". Therefore, it would only be suitable to choose a more exciting title for this essay, as an introduction to the topic.
Yellow Journalism emerged in the United States in the early 19th century. John Peter Zenger issued a pamphlet that covered an argument between governor William Cosby and supreme court of judicature Lewis Morris, supporting Morris. Later, the pamphlet turned into the newspaper New York Weekly Journal. Zenger wrote about the election between Morris and one of Cosby's appointees, which Morris won. During the election, the local sheriff started to interfere, which Zenger reacted to by describing him as a monkey. Zenger went to trial for his actions, however, the jury refused to convict him by the argument that truth was a defence (D.R.Spencer).
After this happened, publishers, editors and commentators realised that they could no longer be in jail by publishing a damaging article. Therefore, they started to explore the boundaries of public tolerance with the goal to increase the readership in order to receive a higher profit. In 1830, the penny press was founded by L.M. Walter. He published newspapers for only a penny with local stories of significance. This lead to an increase in the readership of the non-elite social class and immigrants (D.R.Spencer). The uneducated readers now had a chance to enjoy newspapers, even though it was nothing more than cheap entertainment.
Two of the most famous publishers of America in the early 20th century, are Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Pulitzer was the publisher of The New Work World, which front page emphasized on sensational stories. Hearst was the owner of The New York Morning Journal, a newspaper inspired by the World. A famous cartoon, that contributed greatly to the sale of the World, was "The Yellow Kid". However, there was great competition between the different newspapers. After a raid of Hearst on Pulitzer's staff, Hearst also started using the same cartoon. Since both papers were known for their sensational writing style, this style soon was called the "Yellow Press", referring to the cartoon (Juergens & Swanberg).
For the editors of the New York Journal and the New York world, objectivity was not the goal. They wanted to show the how life in New York was and intervene in its aspects. It was difficult to separate the news from its makers. The reporter provided the filter through which the readers saw the news. Therefore, the news could never be free of value. However, the publishers did not even pretend that objectivity had ever been the goal of the newspapers. (D.R.Spencer).
The Yellow Journalism relied for a large part on advertisers. Since the newspapers were cheap and the readership and circulation figures were high, advertisers were attracted. They helped paying the publication costs in order to receive a higher profit. It appeared like the advertisers had received more power than the readers. As E.L. Godkin said: "The advertiser, rather than the subscriber is now the newspaper bogie." (S.I.Pomerantz). The competition between the newspapers only made it worse. Publishers did their best to get as advertisers as possible. (source)
In August 1835, newspaper The Sun started writing sensational articles about the discoveries of scientist Sir John Herschel on the moon. The article seemed credible, since Herschel had a background with observatory and telescope design. Besides, his father had discovered the planet Uranus. The newspaper wrote "facts" about life and vegetation on the moon. Eventually, other newspapers started copying The Sun's articles as well, until on a certain day, Benjamin H. Day, the publisher of The Sun, revealed that none of the stories was true and it had been Yellow Journalism all the time (D.R.Spencer).
Another example of Yellow Journalism happened in 1844, when some American anti-Catholic newspapers accused Irish immigrants of stealing bibles from public schools. This lead to attacks on Catholic churches and violent riots in Philadelphia. Several churches were destroyed and some people got injured. Later, it turned out that the accusations were not true. (J.Soll)
At the end of the 19th century, American newspapers started covering the developments of the rebellion in Cuba. Both the Journal and the World wrote about executions and other sufferings of the Cubans that happened because of the Spanish rule in the country. With little regard to the truth, the newspapers made up stories and faked several photographs (source). One day Hearst received a telegram from one of his reporters in Cuba which said that everything was quiet over there and there was no sign that there would be a war any time soon. Hearst responded with the words "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war.", making the assumption that Hearst was able to start a war with his newspaper. This shows the importance of the faked photos and Yellow Journalism (Seymour Morris). An important highlight of Yellow Journalism happened on February 15, 1898, when the Maine, an American battleship, exploded. The yellow newspapers concluded that Spain had caused this and wrote headlines like "Destruction of the Ship Maine Was the Work of an Enemy". The sensational writing style of the newspapers influenced the public reaction to the start of the Spanish-American War that begun in May 1898. (source). According to Joseph E. Wisan the war would not have happened without the New York journalism of Hearst. James F.Rhodes wrote: "Public sentiment had been worked up by the sensational press, frequently called the "yellow press. It had manipulated the real news, spread unfounded reports, putting all before their readers with scare headlines." (L.A.Pérez Jr.)
The examples mentioned above show some the negative impacts of Yellow Journalism. However, many people saw the penny press in the nineteenth century as something positive.
It was free, independent and unregulated press, focused to educate the reader on the matters of their interest. But when the press was called “yellow†and accused of being commercial and sensational, this idea disappeared. They had always thought that the penny press was better than the political, partisan, elite press, however, they now realised it was not (C.Meyers).
In Ocotober 1898, after the Spanisch-American War, the newspaper The New York Times reduced the price of its newspaper from three cents to a penny. Adolph S. Ochs, the publisher of the Times explained that 3,5 million people were willing to buy penny press for its price and not for its quality. Therefore, by reducing the price of the Times he offered the public a cheap newspaper that did have good quality news (S.I. Pomerantz).
In 1920 Walter Lippman published a book called Liberty and the News. Lippman urged editors and reporters to commit themselves to "truthful reporting". He wrote that there is no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth. He argues that when you lie in a lawsuit involving your neighbor's cow, you could be sent to jail. However, when someone lies to a million readers in an article involving war and peace, you could be completely irresponsible. Lippman looks at liberty as the development of an information system increasingly independent of opinion instead of permission, which is how many people saw it at that time. In his book, he writes: "We must go back of our opinions to the neutral facts for unity and refreshment of spirit" (M. Schudson).
In the early twentieth century, news organizations started to turn away from the sensationalism of the Yellow Journalism. Instead, the organizations started taking professionalism as an ideal. The New York Times was one of the first newspapers with the aim to be objective. Its slogan was "All the News That's Fit to Print", to show that the newspaper was different from the other sensational newspaper. Adolph S. Ochs had the aim to provide "all the news, in a concise and attractive form". He strived for an impartial newspaper, without any favor for a party (Ochs 1896). During this period, journalism schools and ethical codes were created. Values like separating facts from opinions, accuracy and fairness and above all, objectivity, became important. (A.M.Nadler)
The developers of the objective journalism were journalists and ethicist, who were mainly driven by the social responsibility theory (Stephen J.A. Ward). This theory argues that the press has a responsibility to their readers. It is their task to make journalism informative in a way that is understandable for people. In this way, the provided facts are interpreted the way they ought be and the readers receive information that is truthful. Since the Yellow Journalism was irresponsible and the free press had lead to some negative practices, there was a need for objectivism (Uzuegbunam, C.E.).
Since that twentieth century, objectivism started to develop more and more until the period where we live in right now. Objectivity has become a norm in the contemporary journalism. However, that does not mean Yellow Journalism does not exist anymore. Nowadays, technology plays a great role in the "fake news" of the present. Digital news has brought Yellow Journalism back to life, as one might say. The news feeds that are shown on Facebook timelines have little regard to accuracy or objectivity and care mainly about profits (J.Soll). In the last few years the term "clickbait" has emerged. Clickbait is web content that overpromises or misrepresents its message in order to get the public to click on the article, which will give the publisher a larger revenue. It is about having attractive titles, shocking images and many advertisments. Therefore it is not surprising that this is seen as the modern Yellow Journalism.