“Yellow journalism “ used to be in the minority. Now, real journalism is the minority.
Originally Posted by: Cheesey
To the contrary, "real journalism," as you call it, is the aberration, little more than a brief blip on the timeline of history, while yellow journalism has overwhelmingly been the norm. If anything, I would argue that Tyler Dunne's "smear job" is right in keeping with the rich tradition of American journalism.
From the time the first newspapers were published, neutrality was neither expected of journalists nor even considered desirable. Readers subscribed to newspapers precisely because they
were biased. The rabid diatribes published in the newspapers of the Revolutionary Era up through the first half of the 20th century make Alex Jones sound like a veritable voice of reason and moderation. Wild conspiracy theories, vicious character assassination, and outright calls to violence were so common, they hardly raised an eyebrow. Newspapers were viewed not as impartial chroniclers of recent events but simply as propaganda arms of whatever ideologies they identified with—hence the reason why so many papers still have "Republican," "Democrat," and "Independent" in their titles to this day.
People these days get their panties in a twist when politicians aren't polite or collegial enough. All that proves is they know nothing about this country's history. They certainly have never read the fiery debates—the screaming matches, really—that used to break out in the halls of Congress on a regular basis. Hell, there is at least one known case of a congressman beating his colleague unconscious with a walking stick! We seem to forget that it was politicians and newspaper editors who dragged this nation into a bloody civil war. The vile rhetoric regularly spewed by the newspapers of yesteryear makes Trump's worst Twitter tirades seem like a toddler's "terrible twos" by comparison.
It was only with the rise of Walter Cronkite that neutrality came to be considered an important part of journalism, and even then, it's always been more of an elaborate fiction, a carefully curated illusion, a thin and brittle facade, than anything substantive or authentic. It's certainly true that in recent years the media has become more overt about pandering to the ever more polarized extremes. But all that's really happening is that the media has let the mask slip as journalists increasingly return to their thoroughly yellow roots.