Yellow Journalism

Yellow journalism refers to the style of journalism that features scandals, sensationalism, and unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists. The term originated during the newspaper battles between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. It was another newspaper, New York Press, that coined the term yellow journalism in 1897, apparently arising from The Yellow Kid comic strip that both papers featured in their Sunday editions. From 1895 to about 1989, these two papers were accused of sensationalizing news, exaggerating news, and, even, creating news to increase circulation, although both papers reported serious news as well.

In regard to the New York World, Pulitzer's strategy of low cost, high volume, and a mixture of crime stories, games, and investigative reporting made the paper the highest circulated in New York. Pulitzer's strong link to the Democratic Party also helped increase circulation. Other New York newspapers attacked the World because of its success and accused it of yellow journalism. Hearst founded the Journal to compete with the World and was very successful at luring reporters and consumers to the Journal. The Journal was also Democratic and sympathetic to immigrants, laborers, women, and the poor. Even though these two papers did feature war-hawk stories and inaccurate accounts on their front pages, the journalists who traveled to Cuba to report the war, including Hearst himself, have been credited with exposing the injustice and misrule of the Spanish over Cuba.

In modern times, the term yellow journalism is reserved for news media that use sensationalism, profiteering, propaganda, journalistic bias, or government pandering. Some critics accuse the media conglomerates of cowardly journalism with its focus on infotainment. However, most news media organizations today are respected for, and take pride in, factual, objective, balanced, and fair news reporting.