When I was a teenager in Mt Sterling, Kentucky, I delivered the morning Lexington Herald and the afternoon Lexington Leader, back in those quill pen and inkwell days when the Lexington newspapers were actually delivered throughout central and eastern Kentucky. Now the print editions of the combined Lexington Herald-Leader, published only thrice a week on Wednesdays, Fridays and (ostensibly) Sundays but actually delivered on Saturdays, are delivered via the United States Postal Service in the mail; no more paperboys! The Herald was “moderately liberal” while the Leader was “conservative” in their editorial stances, but by the mid-1980s, after the two dailies merged to form the Herald-Leader, my now late best friend started calling them the Herald-Liberal.
Nevertheless, my recollections of the newspaper back then never had it as blatantly partisan as what I see in the newspapers of today.
We learned in journalism classes — though I was a staffer for the Kentucky Kernel, the university’s student newspaper, in the early 1980s, I was not a journalism major — that journalists were supposed to be independent, even-handed, and impartial in their work. The term “yellow journalism” was often misapplied, but we were supposed to eschew:
In journalism, yellow journalism and the yellow press are American newspapers that use eye-catching headlines and sensationalized exaggerations for increased sales. The English term is chiefly used in the US. In the United Kingdom, a similar term is tabloid journalism. Other languages, e.g. Russian (Жёлтая пресса zhyoltaya pressa), sometimes have terms derived from the American term. Yellow journalism emerged in the intense battle for readers by two newspapers in New York City in 1890s. It was not common in other cities.
Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World in 1883 and told his editors to use sensationalism, crusades against corruption, and lavish use of illustrations to boost circulation. William Randolph Hearst then purchased the rival New York Journal in 1895. They engaged in an intense circulation war, at a time when most men bought one copy every day from rival street vendors shouting their paper’s headlines. The term “yellow journalism” originated from the innovative popular “Yellow Kid” comic strip that was published first in the World and later in the Journal.
This type of reporting was characterized by exaggerated headlines, unverified claims, partisan agendas, and a focus on topics like crime, scandal, sports, and violence. Historians have debated whether Yellow journalism played a large role in inflaming public opinion about Spain’s atrocities in Cuba at the time, and perhaps pushing the U.S. into the Spanish-American War of 1898. Most historians say it did not do so. The two papers reached a working class Democratic audience, and the nation’s upscale Republican decision makers (such as President William McKinley and leaders in Congress) seldom read the Yellow press.
The use of partisan newspapers had a long history in the 20th century, with the Soviet Communists publishing Правда (Pravda, which means ‘truth’ in Russian) and Известия (Izvestia, which means ‘news’ in Russian), to spread their propaganda. Beginning in 1920, the Nazi party in Germany began publishing the Völkischer Beobachter (literally ‘People’s Observer,’ but by ‘Völkisch‘, the people to which it refers are not everyone, but ethnic German nationalists, a term which excluded Jews) to spread, eventually successfully, their political arguments.
During the post-World War II era, newspapers strove to keep their editorial and reportorial functions separate. Among the most notable newspapers in the country, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and several others, the editorial slant was obviously to the liberal side, though rarely wild-eyed, far-out leftism. The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, was more conservative in its editorial department. But in none of those great newspapers were there serious questions about the accuracy of their reporting. Their biases did inevitably creep in, but that was primarily evident in what they chose to cover, rather than the accuracy of what was reported.
Today? As this site reported on Friday evening, the readers and subscribers of The Washington Post have waxed wroth because the newspaper, under the instructions of owner Jeff Bezos, declined to endorse anyone for President, the left being absotively, posilutely incensed that they didn’t endorse Kamala Harris Emhoff. Teeth have been gnashed, garments have been rent, and subscriptions have been cancelled.
Cancelled subscriptions? That’s what really gets to the reporters. CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted:
Canceling a newspaper subscription helps politicians who don’t want oversight, does nothing to hurt the billionaires who own the newspapers and make decisions with which you may disagree, and will result in fewer journalists trying to hold the powerful to account.
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah tweeted:
I didn’t sign up to be a journalist to be silent on what matters most.
I didn’t come here to be a coward. Some of us really, truly believe in speaking truth to power.
We were betrayed today.
Herein lays the problem: the mission of a true journalist shouldn’t be “speaking truth to power,” but to report the news impartially. How are we to have confidence that you are reporting the truth impartially when you blatantly support one position over another? Miss Attiah apparently aspires to the status of journolist, not journalist.
The members of the credentialed media mostly knew of President Joe Biden’s continuing mental decline, but, rather than “hold(ing) the powerful to account” and “speaking truth to power,” they kept their mouths, and keyboards, quiet. The stories of Mr Biden’s slow descent into dementia were many and obvious, but only in independent blogs and on social media; of the credentialed media, the New York Post is the only one I can recall which ever mentioned it. Fox News probably did as well, but as I don’t watch television news — my hearing is so poor that I have to rely on reading the news — and the left-leaning media said virtually nothing.
Remember: they covered up for Hillary Clinton as well, her several falls and then her brief lapse into catatonia, minimizing what they couldn’t completely hide.
If you only paid attention to CNN and the major newspapers, you would never have known that President Biden was zombifying, and it’s all because the media were so consumed with #TrumpDerangementSyndrome that they didn’t want to say anything which might hurt his prospects for re-election, right up until the time of his infamous debate performance, when it was exposed to the American public.
“Speaking truth to power” means telling us all of the truth, including truths which do not fit with your political preferences. That’s what Mr Tapper and Miss Attiah and the vast majority of the journolists who were aware of his conditions failed to do.