You immediately click the link to the story and there's a video. You watch the video that, sure enough, shows an eagle swooping down.
It grabs a baby and tries to take off again. The baby proves too awkward for the eagle and it drops him not a long distance, but enough to make it news worthy the "baby" was fine. What a great story, right? The journalist did their job. They found a jaw dropping story that was sure to bring in readers and they even had a video to boot. Unfortunately, even videos aren't safe from yellow journalism. Shortly after the news story had aired, proof came out that the video was a fake.
With today's technology one can create digital effects for just about anything. It turns out that the video had been created by three college students in Canada. Even though the internet is considered to be fairly new technology and has become a breeding ground for yellow journalism, it actually started long before the World Wide Web came about.
The perfect example of this is a picture that has been circulating around text books, newspapers and even ads since WWI. The photograph shows a man standing in front of a brick wall blindfolded and facing a firing squad. The picture was first published in a newspaper during WWI. The caption stated that the man was a captured enemy spy. The real story behind the picture is that the photo was staged. There was a photographer who was overseas in Belgium photographing the war.
He had taken many staged shots, this being one of them. Not only was this photo staged, but the photographer was actually posing as the "enemy spy". Or do we simply choose not to? We know that media can be manipulative. But, it can also misinform by accident and act inadvertently, lead by the desire to be the fastest to get a certain story in front of their readers. But, what about the audience? How do they handle false news? Shockingly enough, readers are not very good at spotting fake news.
So now, we must explain how confirmation bias works. Humans tend to favor the type of information that aligns well with their existing beliefs and biases. When we encounter a story we like, we will probably accept it without a dash of criticism.
In fact, we might reject other stories that contradict it or choose to ignore them. This can happen consciously or without us even realizing it. Either way, it is quite dangerous. If we turn truth into a matter of choice, it will become meaningless. Yellow press and online media that distribute fake news and use sensationalism as a growth tactic, act as catalysts in this context.
They enable misinformation and weaken our ability to think critically, making the post-truth world the only place we can inhabit.
However, there are other points of view out there. For instance, one of the most renowned historians and philosophers of today, Yuval Noah Harari, believes we have never left the post-truth world because we are a post-truth species. Fiction and false stories are what unites humans, which has always been more important than knowing what is true.
But despite the fact everything is staged, it is perceived to be true because the audience shows the will to play along. As Jeremy Gordon pointed out in his article for The New York Times , this concept of staged reality goes beyond the entertainment industry and can be clearly seen in politics and media.
It is sometimes hard to see where our actual behaviour ends and our meta-behaviour starts. On the contrary, we turn to laughter, think about the absurdity of the world, and make the most of it.
So, we have established that yellow journalism, fake news, and clickbait articles are bad. But, how are journalists supposed to earn a profit? For media outlets that function within the private sector, it can get pretty tough out there, money-wise.
The term originated in the competition over the New York City newspaper market between major newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. In , in an effort to boost sales of his New York Journal, Hearst hired Outcault away from Pulitzer, launching a fierce bidding war between the two publishers over the cartoonist. Hearst ultimately won this battle, but Pulitzer refused to give in and hired a new cartoonist to continue drawing the cartoon for his paper.
This battle over the Yellow Kid and a greater market share gave rise to the term yellow journalism. Once the term had been coined, it extended to the sensationalist style employed by the two publishers in their profit-driven coverage of world events, particularly developments in Cuba. Cuba had long been a Spanish colony and the revolutionary movement, which had been simmering on and off there for much of the 19th century, intensified during the s.
It has since been used as a photo from WWII. Simpson - Live reporting of the chase and capture of Simpson sensationalized this tragic case after Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife. Tiger Woods - The news media had a heyday with the story of his affairs, including interviewing sex addicts. Botox mom - This story of a mom giving her daughter Botox and waxings to keep her looking young was a hoax. Crazed woman chases Brad Pitt - The headline is an eye-catcher , but she was really just running after him to take a picture.
Many more examples of yellow journalism have been seen in tabloid headlines over the years, as well as in other publications.
Catchy headlines can be great as long as they're accurate and not overly sensationalized. As you can see, yellow journalism attracts attention but typically doesn't have much substance. Learning to recognize fake news, misinformation and overly sensationalized stories presented as if they were news can help keep you from being influenced by biased reporting.
Often, yellow journalism headlines don't even reflect the content of the stories they're introducing.
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