News channels serve the purpose of bringing people the information they want to know. From local news to world news each serve the same purpose. Many people have watching the news as part of their routine and expect to gain trustworthy information from it. As it turns out however, the media may not always be the place to get trustworthy information. The media may change the facts and stories to gain viewers and peek interests. This isn’t an occurrence that just started happening recently. The name given for this is yellow journalism which is, “Journalism that exploits, distorts or exaggerates the news to create sensations and attract readers” (“Yellow” 1). This all started in the late 1800’s. Joseph Pulitzer as well as Williams Randolph Hearst were major contributing factors to the whole yellow journalism process. Pulitzer purchased the “New York World” newspaper and shortly after Hearst bought the “New York Journal” (“Comm455/History” 1).
These two were battling for the top spot for sales and in doing so a circulation battle soon occurred. Trying to outdo each other they embellished some of their stories. Sometimes they would even make up stories all together. It wasn’t just one or the other doing this. Both of the top selling newspapers at the time were completely making
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Tensions were already high between the United States and Spain but the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in Cuba’s Havana harbor was the final straw. Journalist were quick to blame Spain for this incident even though there was little evidence pointing toward them as the culprit (2). All of this pushed the United States into war with Spain for Cuba and the Philippines (“Milestones” 1). This was the start of yellow journalism and it still continues to this day but it isn’t exactly in all the same