Posted on 05/24/2014 5:28:10 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
From the London M.A.P. (Mainly About People), June 13th, 1908, a conversation with William Randolph Hearst is recorded:
Mr. Hearst was once asked to define "yellow" journalism. "It is furiously active journalism," he replied, "journalism that is not content with merely printing news, but which aims rather to educate and influence its audience, and through it, to accomplish something for the benefit of the community and the and the whole country."
A larger view of this can be seen in W. T. Stead's character sketch of Hearst:
"'Yellow journalism,'" said Mr. Hearst, "is active journalism. It is the journalism which is not content with merely printing news, not content with merely securing an audience, but which seeks rather to educate and influence its audience, and through it to accomplish something for the benefit of the community and the whole country. My particular form of yellow journalism attacks special privilege and class distinction, and all things that I believe to be undemocratic and un-American. A journalism which employs the power of its vast audience to accomplish beneficial results for all the people is the Journalism of the Future. Better still, I think it is the Journalism of the Present. I cannot imagine why anyone should want to print a newspaper except for that purpose. I myself don't find any satisfaction in sensational news, comic supplements, dress patterns, and other features of journalism, except as they serve to attract an audience to whom the editorials in my newspapers are addressed. You must first get your congregation before you can preach to it, and educate it to an appreciation and practice of the higher ideals of life."
We’re way beyond “yellow” journalism. These days it’s “red” journalism.
A journalism which employs the power of its vast audience to accomplish beneficial results for all the people is the Journalism of the Future. Better still, I think it is the Journalism of the Present. I cannot imagine why anyone should want to print a newspaper except for that purpose.That is a perfectly rational perspective. I agree with it.However, that is not objective. Anyone who expects objectivity in journalism expects what never was, and what can never be. However factual a paper may be - and that is a fact not always in evidence - the decisions on what to report and what to omit inevitably express a perspective which the editor, and the publisher who employs him, are willing or eager to project.
I myself don't find any satisfaction in sensational news, comic supplements, dress patterns, and other features of journalism, except as they serve to attract an audience to whom the editorials in my newspapers are addressed. You must first get your congregation before you can preach to it, and educate it to an appreciation and practice of the higher ideals of life."Fine - except that sensational news has an ideological implication. If you aren’t comfortable with the ideological implication of reporting news which casts a negative light on the people who are trying to get things done and working to a bottom line, you can’t be a journalist. If you are, then you can be a journalist, but you are not objective - you are a “liberal” - that is, you are a socialist.
Thanks for the BEEP!
It would take a titanic change in mass media to ever get real honesty.
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