Talk:Yellow journalism

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Former good article nomineeYellow journalism was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
May 1, 2007Good article nomineeNot listed

Movie casts?[edit]

What do the various casts of movies (especially who plays a serial killer that is himself in now way connected to the topic) have to do with yellow journalism?

Vandalism cleaned[edit]

Reverted to 23 March 2007 version, and added Journalism portal link.

Chelmar

Need Citation[edit]

"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."

Absurd statements by "historians" being cited uncritically[edit]

This article states that historians, not mentioned by name, say in sources not listed that the newspapers at the time largely had no effect on public opinion in regards to the war. What percentage of historians exactly have this opinion? 100%? 99%? 50% 20%? It is not mentioned if there are any historians who feel otherwise. And none mentioned by name who do think so.

 But let's just say for argument that 100% say so. Is it possible for a human to know whether someone living 100 years ago has his opinion influenced by what he read in a newspaper? No. But common sense says that since it is a scientific fact that today, human beings are indeed influenced by what they read and their minds do change based on what they read, that the same was true back then, even all the way back to cave paintings.
 Then this article amazingly says that it was not the newspapers that swayed the opinions of the American people into war, it was the Cubans getting killed by the Spanish" that did it. How did Americans learn about the "killings?" NEWSPAPERS. 
    This whole article is gas lighting us to believe that media has no power to sway opinion and yellow journalism never motivated a single person to support a war, and if that is true it must be true today that no media has ever swayed the American people into war. All our wars were perfectly righteous and noble and definitely not Imperialism. Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent is apparently just a lie and it's all in our heads. Classic gas lighting. Nothing to see here.
   Then the most ridiculous thing of all is that this article refers to "historians" who say yellow journalism only existed within the city limits of New York City. So I guess there is a magic Wizzard that put a spiritual protective dome over New York City so that none of the yellow journalism ever got out and so much as crossed the Hudson River into Jersey City let alone the rest of the world. This is absurd and it doesn't matter if God himself says it, yellow journalism at it's core really just means "bad journalism with impure motives." They exaggerate and choose stories that may even be true, but they pick the stories to push the narrative and agenda they want. EVERY NEWSPAPER EVER HAS DONE AND DOES DO THIS. Period. It really has a lot to do with bias. And every human is biased, even me. Journalists and historians are notoriously biased and political.
   Then a study is reported on 41 newspapers papers, 36 of which eventually supported the war. But the person who did the study twisted the explanation so much that it is offered as proof that yellow journalism only existed in New York and the American people had absolutely no contact or knowledge of pro war propaganda. Yet they somehow knew about the mass killings. But according to the actual numbers, 36 out of 41 newspapers eventually were pro war. This proves the opposite of what the Wiki contributors are trying to say.
  Finally, just because "historians" say something doesn't mean you turn off your critical thinking skills and just numbly accept what they say.
    Now queue the rabid badgers. Zengalileo (talk) 06:27, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
the key Yellow Journalism newspapers of Hearst and Pulitzer were based in New York City and appealed to a working class audience. Policy makers (like president McKinley) did not read them or mention them in their extensive correspondence. Historians know this because they read the private letters of politicians (who are the ones who vote on wars). Historians do read a wide selection of newspapers from across the country, looking especially at editorials that discuss what national policy should be. The nation's newspapers did cover the Spanish rule in Cuba--they did not reprint the greatly exaggerated claims of Hearst and Pulitzer especially about the battleship Maine. Rjensen (talk) 19:29, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of term[edit]

I've added an explanation from the State Department's Office of the Historian to the page because it appears a much more convincing explanation than what is there. I haven't removed the paragraph about Wardman because that may well be the proximate explanation and I haven't read Campbell's somewhat older book. The Outcault story is of course repeated much further down the article.Chris55 (talk) 18:27, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

the anonymous unsourced simplified statements posted on the State Department website do not meet scholarly standards that are applied to articles in history journals. The question of Yellow Journalism has been studied in depth by historians and scholars of Journalism--Google Scholar giver 189,000 citations to scholarly journals and books to "Yellow Journalism". But it is not studied by the State Department, so we can't recommend it as a "reliable source" regarding public opinion. (Furthermore they never publish comments that are hostile to State Department policy). In any case when dealing with 1898, the final decisions were made in the White House and Congress, and not in the small State Department. Rjensen (talk) 20:07, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I almost put the word "official" in quotes in my edit comment, and it might have been more appropriate. WP doesn't require academic (i.e. peer-reviewed) standards, only a "reliable source" and I hope that you would agree at least with that. I doubt that there's any need for political correctness in regard to this historical understanding. Chris55 (talk) 19:06, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The State Department office in question handles only official communications to and from the State Department. It does not deal with the history of US newspapers--it is not official and the short passage in question was not prepared by an expert in US journalism. It appears to be the sort of item written by a summer intern. I do NOT consider it a "reliable" source on Yellow Journalism. Google Scholar and other guides to scholarship do not include it for non-diplomatic issues. We have thousands of reliable sources listed at Google Scholar for "yellow journalism Spanish American war" -- see this useful list of reliable sources Rjensen (talk) 19:43, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A better source[1] discusses Outcault's comic, him being hired away by Hearst, Pulitzer finding a different artist to continue Hogan's Alley (the Yellow Kid comic), then says in the same paragraph: Now both newspapers had their splash of yellow, and the new style of journalism with which both of the papers were associated became known as "yellow journalism". But that's rather indirect to claim the term was because of the comic character. Schazjmd (talk) 19:56, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Daly, Christopher B. Covering America. University of Massachusetts Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-62534-298-0.

Further Reading cleanup[edit]

Hi @DuncanHill, have you had a chance to review WP:Further Reading? It recommends keeping these sections short and recent and in reverse chronological order. Is there a reason I'm missing why maybe we should treat this article differently or maybe wait a little bit before doing the cleanup? Superb Owl (talk) 21:31, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You removed sources that references in the article use, causing reference errors. I restored them and have now separated these out into a Sources section. Clean up all you like, but be more careful about sources. DuncanHill (talk) 21:44, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clarifying - did not know sources could be used in Further Reading - will keep an eye out for those reference errors going forward Superb Owl (talk) 22:21, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]