The True Impact of Yellow Journalism
There have been many misconceptions about the controversial topic of yellow journalism. Many questions have arisen seeking to find out if it was the cause of the Spanish-American War or not. It was founded in the 1890s by James Gordon Bennett when the term was applied to the new media coming out to introduce sensationalism into the news. Headlines featured stories of the Spanish and created chaos by making some of the headlines blown out of proportion. This new type of propaganda angered many Americans on their views and made it difficult for President McKinley to come up with a peaceful solution. Controversy has remained current to the topic of whether the strategy has pertained to starting a war. The headlines
…show more content…
Yellow journalism did not start the Spanish-American War on its own, but did play a huge part in the fueling the propaganda towards angering citizens.
In order to boost sales, Pulitzer and Hearst competed against one another and exaggerated their headlines to appeal and gain interest from the public. “With so much competition between the newspapers, the news was over-dramatized and altered to fit story ideas that publishers and editors thought would sell the most papers and stir the most interest for the public so that news boys could sell more papers on street corners” (Vance “Yellow Journalism"). Society believed that because the newspapers were in the business of making profit, the truth had to be stretched in the community of journalism in order for it to continue with its market. Competition was mainly based on the profit intake of the newspapers. Starting out, William Hearst priced his newspapers cheaper than his rivals, only costing 1 cent, but still offered the same, if not more, information and content. This strategy worked and The Journal’s distribution went rapidly to 150,000 copies sold. After learning this, Pulitzer cut his company’s price, going from 2 cents to only 1 cent, hoping to