Yellow Journalism and Muckraking

                                

Yellow Journalism (also known as the yellow press): a style of news reporting that prioritizes sensationalism over facts. Gives illegitimate news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Popular techniques include exaggerations of news events or scandals.

How it Originated

Yellow journalism is a term first coined during the famous newspaper wars between William Randolph Hearst (The NY Journal) and Joseph Pulitzer II (The NY World). Led by newspaper owners Hearst and Pulitzer, Journalism of the 1890s used melodrama, romance, and hyperbole to sell millions of newspapers, a style that became known as Yellow Journalism.

Yellow Journalism not only made the newspaper more exciting to read but it is fair to say that aside from positive financial gain, it also had major negative impacts. For example, the practice of yellow journalism is also what sparked the beginning of the Spanish-American war in 1898. (Below)

                                 

                                    

Muckraking: The Ideas Of Reform-Minded Journalists

The investigative techniques of the muckrakers include looking over and studying documents, conducting several interviews, and in some cases, going undercover. This is very different from yellow journalism, where newspapers sensationalized stories using simply an idea rather than facts. people could consider Muckraking to be a bad practice because of the journalists going undercover. The reason that someone may see going undercover as something negative is if they are a public figure or a political figure and they have secrets that they do not want to be uncovered. on the other hand, people may see yellow journalism as a negative practice because they are not fact-checking as it should be and is just sensationalizing an idea.

When it comes to labeling something as good or bad, personally it is not something I enjoy doing. However, logically and morally, Yellow journalism is the moral equivalent to lying. Yellow journalism robs the American public of knowing all the detail and information they deserve to know on particular topics while Muckraking has much more legitimacy to it. The ways to differentiate the two is that muckraking will have much more detail, research, and interviews surrounding the topic while yellow journalism will typically only have opinion pieces and publications rather than live interviews with professionals or any explicit details.

Muckraking is extremely similar if not identical to watchdog journalism. Thus, journalists should be involved in politics in the sense that they have a good knowledge of political processes and the officials in control of these processes. this is because then they can have some general understanding of what is going on and who they should speak to. I do not believe journalists should be personally involved in the politics they report on as that can lead to bias. Muckrakers are very similar to whistleblowers however muckrakers are journalists who expose the truths about public figures or institutions while whistleblowers are individuals who work for these institutions and decided to anonymously expose the things going on behind closed doors.

Muckraking is something that should be praised just as whistleblowing should be praised. this is because muckraking clear up the foggy window between our government and ourselves.