Just the facts, ma'am...?

"You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," responded New York Journal publisher William Randolph Hearst via telegram to artist Frederic Remington, upon receiving word that all was quiet in Cuba. Embroiled in a turf battle for readership, Hearst and rival newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer of New York World began campaigns of article writing now referred to as Yellow Journalsim.

Yellow Journalism, so nicknamed 1897 by the New York Press, calls up images of sensationalized stories, half-truths, and outright lies, all used for the purposes of selling the news or, in some case, moving social agendas. The Journal and the World, for example, are credited in moving public opinion toward American involvement in Cuba's fight for independence with their falsified stories Spanish atrocities against Cubans.

(Historical note: after the sinking of the USS Maine in Havanna, Hearst's Journal ran the headline: "The War Ship Maine was Split in Two by an Enemy's Secret Infernal Machine." The fallacious story outlined a plot by Spain to sink the Maine by hiding a torpedo under its hull and detinating it from shore. Stories like this inundated the newspapers and swayed the public toward involvement. Three months after the sinking, the United States Congress declared war on Spain, thus beginning the Spanish-American War.)

The era of sensationalism in journalism is thought by some to have lost its hold on fact-based journalism, and found a niche of its own in "grocery store" tabloid papers. If you truly believe this, listen to the headlines on your local news, or read the first sentence in just about any newspaper report.

"Tonight at 11," chimes the newscaster's voice of video feed, "Is your child safe? The KXYZ news team investigates the latest popular electronic toothbrush. See what really happens in your child's mouth."

Yes, that was yellow journalism journaling yellow journalism. Listen to the commercials for your local news, though, and you'll be given the gift of your very own personalized sensationalism.
Hearst's and Pulitzer's shameful tactics are alive and well in all the news media formats. Add to that this new era of blogging the news (insert your op-ed here) and you have a yarn ball of opined hearsay facts from third party sources told under the condition of anonymity. The facts are still there, hidden somewhere under the enticing adjectives and ear-candy metaphors.

Twenty-four-hour news coverage hasn't helped. After all, now you don't just get the news; you get the "experts" talking about it for an hour and a half afterward. There's no need to form your own opinion anymore. The experts will tell you what it means. How do we as a society separate fact from opinion? In this era of news at your fingertips, when your iPhone alerts you of the latest headlines, and a blog is just a GoogleNews-click away, are we really supposed to discern the difference?

Hey, who put this soapbox here?