First published December 22, 1996
In 1896, William Randolph Hearst purchased
the New York Journal and went into competition with Joseph
Pulitzer's New York World.
Hearst systematically raided Pulitzer's staff
at the World and introduced the penny paper. When Pulitzer followed
suit, the penny-paper wars raged in New York City.
According to historians Edwin and Michael Emery,
the circulation at Hearst's Journal jumped 125,000 in the fall
of 1896. Talented writers such as Dorothea Dix and Stephen Crane
joined the Journal. The outstanding factor in the rise of Hearst's
Journal was sensationalism, a formula for news based on lurid
stories of sin, violence and sex.
But the formula wasn't Hearst's as much as
it was Pulitzer's. Pulitzer built the World into the highest circulating
and most popular New York newspaper by mixing solid news coverage
with all the sensationalism his audience could bear.
Pulitzer also
threw in promotional stunts, such as sending reporter Elizabeth
Cochrane -- who wrote under the byline of Nelly Bly -- around
the world to beat the time of Jules Verne's popular novel, ``Around
the World in 80 Days.'' (She did it in 72 days.)
In the midst of this battle, both papers printed
comics.
A popular comic in Pulitzer's World was ``Hogan's
Alley,'' that included a character called ``The Yellow Kid.''
In his raids on Pulitzer's staff, Hearst hired
the ``Hogan's Alley'' cartoonist, and ``The Yellow Kid'' began
appearing in the Journal, in full color thanks to Hearst's new
press.
Pulitzer countered by running the same ``Yellow
Kid'' drawn by a new artist, often on the front page.
Critics attacked the Hearst-Pulitzer approach
as ``yellow journalism,'' referring to an emphasis on sex, violence
and crime sprinkled with emotionalism, inaccuracies, and exaggerations.
Historians generally
blame Hearst and Pulitzer for inciting the Spanish-American War
with exaggerated threats to U.S. interests and overplaying Cuba's
struggle against Spain.
Thus, we get the critical label of yellow journalism.
Incidentally, it was about this time Adolph
S. Ochs salvaged the New York Times from bankruptcy and
over the next 40 years guided it to its position as the preeminent
newspaper in the world.
Ochs disdained stunts, sensationalism and yellow
journalism. In fact, Ochs banned comics from his newspaper and
put an emphasis on financial and cultural stories, threads that
persist in ``The Old Gray Lady,'' as the Times has come to be
known by journalists.
In this centennial year of the start of yellow
journalism, most practitioners would claim that brand of newspapering
has gone away; that the yellow journalism Hearst and Pulitzer
encouraged has yielded to informed, intelligent and unbiased reporting;
that the Yellow Kid is dead.
Critics of journalism
claim otherwise, and many lurid stories filling newspapers and
broadcast bands appear to support their arguments.
True yellow journalism as it's practiced still,
however, has little to do with the content of the news. Human
nature being what it is, there will always be sensational news
to report.
Readers need to keep in mind that Hearst's
and Pulitzer's wars took place before Freud and his followers
made sex the second most important topic of popular discussion
after money, and before television blurred the lines between news
and entertainment.
Today's yellow journalism finds fertile ground
in would-be journalists whose motives have little to do with social
conscience, disclosure of injustice, uncovering wrongdoing or
giving voice to the voiceless.
These journalists-in-name-only are self-seekers
whose motives involve pride, profit and a program of abusing the
rules of journalism.
Today's journalists
are in danger of becoming entertainers, celebrities and spokespersons
for the rich and powerful.
Problems still beleaguer journalism that feed
into the ``new yellow journalism''; for example:
A recent case is the FBI investigation of Richard
Jewell for the bombing during the Atlanta Olympics.
No matter how one feels about Jewell or the
FBI, it is clear that somewhere an irresponsible journalist published
or broadcast a story built on an unnamed official's word.
TV journalists who interview other TV journalists
on an important story, and print journalists who rewrite others'
stories without checking details or seeking later developments
feed this problem. Where are the sources?
ABC-TV news earlier
this year got itself snagged in defending its claim that Israel's
Benjamin Netanyahu had called then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
a traitor, building the story on ``numerous press reports from
the region'' that turned out to be spurious.
Too many contemporary journalists, in a rush
to be first in print or on air that has more to do with personal
prestige than with informing the public, have overlooked two basic
journalistic rules: 1) Find a second, confirming source, and 2)
check, check again, and then recheck.
We modern journalists may not practice the
sensationalism that marked the yellow journalism of Hearst and
Pulitzer in their quest for profits, but we are in subtle danger
of compromising ourselves for the sake of prominence and payoffs.
Perhaps its not yellow journalism, but it's
tainted; it smacks of pale professionalism, amber ambivalence,
saffron selfishness.
The Yellow Kid at 100 has simply matured; he's
still around and he's still yellow.
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Allan R. Andrews can be contacted at andrews852@verizon.net