An undying myth of American journalism is that yellow journalism, as practiced by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, led the country to war with Spain in April 1898.
That notion, I wrote in my 2001 book, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies, “tidily, if mistakenly, serves to illustrate the power and the lurking malevolence of America's news media.” That's an important reason the yellow journalism myth lives on.
And on.
The myth reemerged the other day in a Time magazine online feature listing the “top 10 forgettable presidents” of the United States. Leading the list was Martin Van Buren. In eight place was William McKinley, about whom Time said:
“McKinley was a savvy politician who listened carefully to the public. Though he opposed it at first, McKinley brought the country to war with Spain in 1898 as Pulitzer and Hearst's ‘yellow journalism' juiced the nation's appetite for a fight. America's claim to Puerto Rico and Guantanamo Bay count among the war's legacies.”
So the yellow journalism “juiced” the country's war appetite, eh?
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