In English, the term is chiefly used in the US. In the UK, a roughly equivalent term is tabloid journalism, meaning journalism characteristic of tabloid newspapers, even if found elsewhere. Other languages, e.g. Russian (Жёлтая пресса), sometimes have terms derived from the American term. A common source of such writing is called checkbook journalism,
which is the controversial practice of news reporters paying sources
for their information without verifying its truth or accuracy. In the
U.S. it is generally considered unethical, with most mainstream
newspapers and news shows having a policy forbidding it. In contrast,
tabloid newspapers and tabloid television shows, which rely more on
sensationalism, regularly engage in the practice.
Frank Luther Mott identifies yellow journalism based on five characteristics:
The term was coined by Erwin Wardman, the editor of the New York Press. Wardman was the first to publish the term but there is evidence that expressions such as "yellow journalism" and "school of yellow kid journalism" were already used by newsmen of that time. Wardman never defined the term exactly. Possibly it was a mutation from earlier slander where Wardman twisted "new journalism" into "nude journalism". Wardman had also used the expression "yellow kid journalism" referring to the then-popular comic strip which was published by both Pulitzer and Hearst during a circulation war. In 1898 the paper simply elaborated: "We called them Yellow because they are Yellow."
Definitions
Joseph Campbell describes yellow press newspapers as having daily multi-column front-page headlines covering a variety of topics, such as sports and scandal, using bold layouts (with large illustrations and perhaps color), heavy reliance on unnamed sources, and unabashed self-promotion. The term was extensively used to describe certain major New York City newspapers around 1900 as they battled for circulation.Frank Luther Mott identifies yellow journalism based on five characteristics:
- scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news
- lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings
- use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts
- emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips
- dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.
Origins: Pulitzer vs. Hearst
Etymology and early usage
The term was coined in the mid-1890s to characterize the sensational journalism that used some yellow ink in the circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The battle peaked from 1895 to about 1898, and historical usage often refers specifically to this period. Both papers were accused by critics of sensationalizing the news in order to drive up circulation, although the newspapers did serious reporting as well. An English magazine in 1898 noted, "All American journalism is not 'yellow', though all strictly 'up-to-date' yellow journalism is American!"The term was coined by Erwin Wardman, the editor of the New York Press. Wardman was the first to publish the term but there is evidence that expressions such as "yellow journalism" and "school of yellow kid journalism" were already used by newsmen of that time. Wardman never defined the term exactly. Possibly it was a mutation from earlier slander where Wardman twisted "new journalism" into "nude journalism". Wardman had also used the expression "yellow kid journalism" referring to the then-popular comic strip which was published by both Pulitzer and Hearst during a circulation war. In 1898 the paper simply elaborated: "We called them Yellow because they are Yellow."
Hearst in San Francisco, Pulitzer in New York
"Evil spirits", such as "Paid Puffery" and "Suggestiveness", spew from "the modern daily press" in this Puck cartoon of November 21, 1888
Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World in 1883 after making the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the dominant daily in that city. Pulitzer strove to make the New York World
an entertaining read, and filled his paper with pictures, games and
contests that drew in new readers. Crime stories filled many of the
pages, with headlines like "Was He a Suicide?" and "Screaming for
Mercy."
In addition, Pulitzer only charged readers two cents per issue but gave
readers eight and sometimes 12 pages of information (the only other two
cent paper in the city never exceeded four pages).
While there were many sensational stories in the New York World,
they were by no means the only pieces, or even the dominant ones.
Pulitzer believed that newspapers were public institutions with a duty
to improve society, and he put the World in the service of social reform.
Just two years after Pulitzer took it over, the World became the highest circulation newspaper in New York, aided in part by its strong ties to the Democratic Party. Older publishers, envious of Pulitzer's success, began criticizing the World,
harping on its crime stories and stunts while ignoring its more serious
reporting — trends which influenced the popular perception of yellow
journalism. Charles Dana, editor of the New York Sun, attacked The World and said Pulitzer was "deficient in judgment and in staying power."
Pulitzer's approach made an impression on William Randolph Hearst, a mining heir who acquired the San Francisco Examiner from his father in 1887. Hearst read the World while studying at Harvard University and resolved to make the Examiner as bright as Pulitzer's paper.
Under his leadership, the Examiner devoted 24 percent of its space to crime, presenting the stories as morality plays, and sprinkled adultery and "nudity" (by 19th century standards) on the front page. A month after Hearst took over the paper, the Examiner ran this headline about a hotel fire: HUNGRY, FRANTIC FLAMES. They Leap Madly Upon the Splendid Pleasure Palace by the Bay of Monterey, Encircling Del Monte in Their Ravenous Embrace From Pinnacle to Foundation. Leaping Higher, Higher, Higher, With Desperate Desire. Running Madly Riotous Through Cornice, Archway and Facade. Rushing in Upon the Trembling Guests with Savage Fury. Appalled and Panic-Striken the Breathless Fugitives Gaze Upon the Scene of Terror. The Magnificent Hotel and Its Rich Adornments Now a Smoldering heap of Ashes. The Examiner Sends a Special Train to Monterey to Gather Full Details of the Terrible Disaster. Arrival of the Unfortunate Victims on the Morning's Train — A History of Hotel del Monte — The Plans for Rebuilding the Celebrated Hostelry — Particulars and Supposed Origin of the Fire.
Hearst could be hyperbolic in his crime coverage; one of his early pieces, regarding a "band of murderers," attacked the police for forcing Examiner reporters to do their work for them. But while indulging in these stunts, the Examiner also increased its space for international news, and sent reporters out to uncover municipal corruption and inefficiency.
"The Yellow Press", by L. M. Glackens, portrays William Randolph Hearst as a jester distributing sensational stories
In one well remembered story, Examiner reporter Winifred Black was admitted into a San Francisco hospital and discovered that indigent women were treated with "gross cruelty." The entire hospital staff was fired the morning the piece appeared.
Competition in New York
"Yellow journalism" cartoon about Spanish–American War of 1898. The newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst are both attired as the Yellow Kid comics character of the time, and are competitively claiming ownership of the war.
With the success of the Examiner established by the early 1890s, Hearst began looking for a New York newspaper to purchase, and acquired the New York Journal in 1895, a penny paper which Pulitzer's brother Albert had sold to a Cincinnati publisher the year before.
Metropolitan newspapers
started going after department store advertising in the 1890s, and
discovered the larger the circulation base, the better. This drove
Hearst; following Pulitzer's earlier strategy, he kept the Journal's price at one cent (compared to The World's two cent price) while providing as much information as rival newspapers. The approach worked, and as the Journal's
circulation jumped to 150,000, Pulitzer cut his price to a penny,
hoping to drive his young competitor (who was subsidized by his family's
fortune) into bankruptcy.
In a counterattack, Hearst raided the staff of the World
in 1896. While most sources say that Hearst simply offered more money,
Pulitzer — who had grown increasingly abusive to his employees — had
become an extremely difficult man to work for, and many World employees were willing to jump for the sake of getting away from him.
Although the competition between the World and the Journal
was fierce, the papers were temperamentally alike. Both were
Democratic, both were sympathetic to labor and immigrants (a sharp
contrast to publishers like the New York Tribune's Whitelaw Reid, who blamed their poverty on moral defects),
and both invested enormous resources in their Sunday publications,
which functioned like weekly magazines, going beyond the normal scope of
daily journalism.
Their Sunday entertainment features included the first color comic strip pages, and some theorize that the term yellow journalism originated there, while as noted above, the New York Press left the term it invented undefined. Hogan's Alley, a comic strip revolving around a bald child in a yellow nightshirt (nicknamed The Yellow Kid), became exceptionally popular when cartoonist Richard F. Outcault began drawing it in the World in early 1896. When Hearst predictably hired Outcault away, Pulitzer asked artist George Luks to continue the strip with his characters, giving the city two Yellow Kids.
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."
In 1890, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis published "The Right to Privacy",
considered the most influential of all law review articles, as a
critical response to sensational forms of journalism, which they saw as
an unprecedented threat to individual privacy. The article is widely
considered to have led to the recognition of new common law privacy
rights of action.
Spanish–American War
Male Spanish officials strip search an American woman tourist in Cuba looking for messages from rebels; front page "yellow journalism" from Hearst (Artist: Frederic Remington)
Pulitzer's treatment in the World emphasizes a horrible explosion
Hearst's treatment was more effective and focused on the enemy who set the bomb—and offered a huge reward to readers
Pulitzer and Hearst are often adduced as the cause of the United States' entry into the Spanish–American War due to sensationalist stories or exaggerations of the terrible conditions in Cuba.
However, the vast majority of Americans did not live in New York City,
and the decision-makers who did live there probably relied more on staid
newspapers like the Times, The Sun, or the Post. James Creelman wrote an anecdote in his memoir that artist Frederic Remington
telegrammed Hearst to tell him all was quiet in Cuba and "There will be
no war." Creelman claimed Hearst responded "Please remain. You
furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." Hearst denied the
veracity of the story, and no one has found any evidence of the
telegrams existing. Historian Emily Erickson states:
Serious historians have dismissed the telegram story as unlikely. ... The hubris contained in this supposed telegram, however, does reflect the spirit of unabashed self-promotion that was a hallmark of the yellow press and of Hearst in particular.
Hearst became a war hawk
after a rebellion broke out in Cuba in 1895. Stories of Cuban virtue
and Spanish brutality soon dominated his front page. While the accounts
were of dubious accuracy, the newspaper readers of the 19th century did
not expect, or necessarily want, his stories to be pure nonfiction.
Historian Michael Robertson has said that "Newspaper reporters and
readers of the 1890s were much less concerned with distinguishing among
fact-based reporting, opinion and literature."
Pulitzer, though lacking Hearst's resources, kept the story on
his front page. The yellow press covered the revolution extensively and
often inaccurately, but conditions on Cuba were horrific enough. The
island was in a terrible economic depression, and Spanish general Valeriano Weyler, sent to crush the rebellion, herded Cuban peasants into concentration camps,
leading hundreds of Cubans to their deaths. Having clamored for a fight
for two years, Hearst took credit for the conflict when it came: A week
after the United States declared war on Spain, he ran "How do you like
the Journal's war?" on his front page. In fact, President William McKinley never read the Journal, nor newspapers like the Tribune and the New York Evening Post.
Moreover, journalism historians have noted that yellow journalism was
largely confined to New York City, and that newspapers in the rest of
the country did not follow their lead. The Journal and the World
were not among the top ten sources of news in regional papers, and the
stories simply did not make a splash outside New York City.
Rather, war came because public opinion was sickened by the bloodshed,
and because leaders like McKinley realized that Spain had lost control
of Cuba. These factors weighed more on the president's mind than the melodramas in the New York Journal.
When the invasion began, Hearst sailed directly to Cuba as a war
correspondent, providing sober and accurate accounts of the fighting.
Creelman later 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."
After the war
Hearst was a leading Democrat who promoted William Jennings Bryan
for president in 1896 and 1900. He later ran for mayor and governor and
even sought the presidential nomination, but lost much of his personal
prestige when outrage exploded in 1901 after columnist Ambrose Bierce and editor Arthur Brisbane published separate columns months apart that suggested the assassination of William McKinley. When McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901, critics accused Hearst's Yellow Journalism of driving Leon Czolgosz
to the deed. Hearst did not know of Bierce's column, and claimed to
have pulled Brisbane's after it ran in a first edition, but the incident
would haunt him for the rest of his life, and all but destroyed his
presidential ambitions.
Pulitzer, haunted by his "yellow sins," returned the World to its crusading roots as the new century dawned. By the time of his death in 1911, the World
was a widely respected publication, and would remain a leading
progressive paper until its demise in 1931. Its name lived on in the Scripps-Howard New York World-Telegram, and then later the New York World-Telegram and Sun in 1950, and finally was last used by the New York World-Journal-Tribune from September 1966 to May 1967. At that point, only one broadsheet newspaper was left in New York City.
