"Fake News" or Yellow Journalism?

Today, the phrase "fake news" is heard multiple times on a daily basis.  Anyone who has Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter sees it every time they open their phones.  Fake news is everywhere.  It fills people’s social media feeds, and a lot people will read it and lap up every drop of it like a dog on an August summer day in southern Alabama.

However, what about yellow journalism?  Not many people have heard this phrase before or if they have they probably don't know what it means.  At least this was the case for me until it was introduced to me during my college English class. So what is "yellow journalism" and what does it have to with fake news. 

Newspapers used to use yellow journalism, a term used to describe journalism that was more sensationalized, to draw an audience or influence opinion by writing shocking stories that were loosely based on facts and were not accurate to the true events. It started out being used in cartoon strips to characterize life on the streets of New York City.  Then was seen on the front page of these major newspaper when competition increased. It could be even be described as propaganda in some cases.  This is exactly what Hearst and Pulitzer, a newspaper company during the late 1800s, did in response to the U.S. battleship, the Maine, sinking in 1898, with a front page release titled “MAINE EXPLOSION CAUSED BY BOMB OR TORPEDO,” implying that the explosion was conducted by the Spanish, without proper evidence to support the implication.  

Yellow journalism is the reason why people get so consumed by the fake news on their Facebook feeds.  People want their preconceived notation of the world to be true, and so yellow journalists play off this fact.  These writers know that people will search the internet or Facebook and believe anything that falls in line with their beliefs.  The writers are actually just marketing people's emotions and beliefs about a certain topic.

Yellow journalists could have multiple reasons for writing the fake news to include money, or just to influence public opinion. These posts contain articles of a variety of topics just to gain your attention and get you to click on their site.   However, the readers are the reason why these writers stay in business. A lot of people will read a title or maybe a few sentences and then share the article and the cycle begins.