Recently, there has been a growing sense of distrust in modern news media. This is due to a myriad of reasons, but the most common are rampant misinformation, careless wording, and news sources are becoming increasingly polarized and are aligned to one political party’s agenda. As someone who started reading the news for school assignments in sixth grade and became part of my school’s newspaper, I have had a pretty solid trust in what I read from most outlets. However, as I have gotten older, I realized the reality that most people do not share the same thoughts. According to a Gallup survey, 60% of Americans have “not very much trust” in the media to no trust at all.

Most of the modern issues with the media are a result of political spin and unethical reporting. Practices like unfair representation and sensationalist stories only erode trust further. Efforts to combat these trust issues include fact checking on social media and strict standards on truth, correcting any falsehood. Given that we’re so caught up in modern times, it can be easy to overlook the fact that these problems have plagued journalism since the beginning.

Sensationalist journalism is an editorial style in which events and topics are emphasized to make readers excited. Such tactics include omitting facts or other information, being controversial, and appealing to emotions. These articles are intended to raise readership by exploiting human behavior, with the articles utilizing large, eye-catching headlines designed to shock or anger potential readers. Frank Luther Mott, winner of the 1939 Pulitzer Prize, notes that sensationalist journalism, or, ‘Yellow Journalism’ has a few key characteristics.

1. Scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news

2. Lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings

3. Use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts.

4. Emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips

5. Dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.

These tactics are used a lot in the modern day, be it from entertainment publications that promise shocking revelations within the article or YouTube videos, where personalities like MrBeast advertise that they “cured blindness.” However, these very same tactics have been used for as long as publication has existed. Just two instances of sensationalist news affecting the public have been the Boston Massacre and the press surrounding the Spanish-American War. 

The Boston Massacre was an inciting event of the American Revolution. When a crowd of an estimated size of 300 to 400 people were harassing British soldiers by hitting them with clubs and throwing rocks and snowballs, the nine soldiers fired their muskets without orders from their captain, killing three on impact and injuring eight, two of which died of their wounds later. Eight soldiers and an officer were arrested and charged with murder. Only two of the soldiers were convicted, however they were only convicted of manslaughter and were given reduced sentences, as well as had their hands branded. 

This event was heavily publicized by revolutionaries, with Paul Revere and Samuel Adams giving it the name, “The Boston Massacre.” Propaganda surrounding this event was heavily influential in turning public sentiment against the British, with John Adams writing that the "foundation of American independence was laid" by this event. The event even got an annual commemoration dubbed “Massacre Day” between 1771 and 1783, with the commemoration being replaced with Independence Day for 1784 onwards.  

The Boston Massacre may be a major instance of events being deliberately misinterpreted and misrepresented for propaganda purposes, but it wasn’t really from any ‘news’ source. Many of the publications describing the event were anonymous pamphlets written by lone authors. They often had little regard for what actually happened. In the illustration, Mott’s points 2 and 5 are on full display. The image depicts Captain Preston ordering his men to fire their muskets into the crowd. However, that was never an order that was given. The decision to fire was made by the soldiers, not by a superior officer.

Though the media battle surrounding the Boston Massacre was largely fought by individuals and was led by those fighting the war against the British, the sensationalist coverage got nationwide attention and sparked a revolution. These tactics were proven to work. 

Yellow Journalism was a phrase coined in the 1890s, as a result of the New York media coverage of the Spanish-American war. Two rival newspapers, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and Wiliam Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal would sensationalize news coverage of the war to drive readership and circulation. Pulitzer’s World was popular as it was the longest 2-cent newspaper in the city, at 8-12 pages, over double the second longest 2-cent paper’s 4-page length. However, many of the pages were filled with headlines like “Was He a Suicide?”

While many New York-based newspapers, like the Sun, criticized Pulitzer’s approach to news writing, William Randolph Hearst embraced Pulitzer’s style, causing him to purchase the New York Journal, a competing 1-cent paper.  Hearst provided the public with the same amount of information as rival papers, but at a much lower price point, dramatically increasing the readership of the Journal. 

Despite fierce competition, the World and Journal were very similar. The papers were both democratic, being sympathetic to labor workers and immigrants, with the papers pioneering a special Sunday edition with full-color comic strip pages. 

When the Spanish-American War started, both Hearst and Pulitzer’s publications ran sensationalist stories that exaggerated the state of the conflict in Cuba. Hearst had his paper run story after story centered around the brutality of the Spanish and the bravery of the Cubans. Despite a lack of resources, Pulitzer still kept the conflict at the center of his paper, with the revolution being covered extensively and inaccurately. 

The Journal extensively covered the war, with the paper offering bounties for information on the war, as seen with the front page on the left, which offered $50,000 for information on the bombing of a U.S. Warship. Even when the United States formally declared war on Spain, the Journal took credit, advertising it as “The Journal’s War,” even though President William McKinley never read the paper.

This biased, but extensive coverage of the conflict, combined with the claims of causing the United States to enter an armed conflict. Once President William McKinley was assassinated, the World and Journal were deemed responsible for radicalizing the shooter, destroying William Randolph Hearst’s presidential ambitions and causing Pulitzer to turn the World into a respectable publication to atone for his “yellow sins.” 

In the modern day, the term ‘Yellow Journalism’ has fallen out of fashion, with it being replaced with phrases like ‘fake news’ and ‘misinformation.’ However, many of the same tactics employed from the Spanish-American War are employed today. Large, inflammatory headlines are used across the political spectrum, with many stories showcasing embarrassing photos of politicians and feature wording that is specifically designed to cater to one’s beliefs. If you read the story beneath the headline, you learn that the governor of Texas has been sending their asylum seekers to other states run by their political opponents, one of which being New York. However, the headline instead focuses on the failures of New York City, as the city attempts to house migrants despite shelters being full. To continue this, Fox News calls the asylum seekers “illegal immigrants” and quotes the city in the headline, which can give the impression that the city isn’t caring for the immigrants as well as they could have.

The second headline, from Vox, refers to a text message between Tucker Carlson and a producer for his show that aired on the Fox News Channel. The text message is shown below:

“A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how White men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?”

This text message was published in the New York Times, and the article it was published in was linked to in the Vox article, however Vox never showed the full message. Instead, Vox pulled quotes from the text message, emphasizing the phrase “It’s not how white men fight” as there is an implication that members of other races don’t fight honorably and the “Trump guys” weren’t acting white. Vox goes into detail, asking if this text message is 'more racist' than some of Carlson’s other statements.

However, I think it’s important to point out that this isn’t newsworthy. Yes, Carlson had a platform where he would say disrespectful things because that’s what gave him the viewership. Yes, these views are harmful and influenced millions of Americans. However, an entire article was written surrounding this one text message and how it spells out and confirms exactly what Carlson said he believed on his own show. Most of this article is spent quoting Carlson saying racist things, and the article even goes so far as to call him a white supremacist when it says, “But the text reported by the Times — ‘It’s not how white men fight’ — is certainly as undisguised an expression of his white supremacist thought as I’ve seen.”

If I were to come up with a solution to these problems, I would say that we need to have higher journalistic standards and educate the public on how to tell when a source is being biased and give the public the skills to think critically about what they read. There could be a nationwide curriculum in schools to educate students about thinking critically and news outlets can hold itself to a higher standard than they have today.

A good way to measure if my vision is working is to look at the percentage of Americans that trust the news media. If the tactics are working and the media is becoming more truthful and less sensationalist, then we would start the slow healing process of rebuilding trust in the public.