Yellow Journalism is a very negative and a mutated branch of Journalism which distorts, exaggerates, and exploits actual news to create sensational media news in the society. It is basically done to gain a lot of attention and attraction possible by the audience. It is a concept that goes against media laws and practices, and against the key rules, ethics and principles which are ought to be followed by media professionals. Yellow journalism believes in creating frenzy and an outburst of public opinion and sensationalizing them, underreporting and misreporting of facts, and delivering false claims and quotes. Journalists, these days, indulge in Yellow Journalism basically to feed the appetite of sensationalizing news and to monger scandal in the society regarding various hot topics.
This tendency of reporting misleading facts about stories and also misleading the audience has been growing menacingly. Today, newspapers, news channels and magazines are more bothered about the sprawling attention they could garner by reporting not true, but a little exaggerated piece. There are various reasons as to why Yellow Journalism is on the rise, while reporters and journalists have started having very little respect for media ethics and principles. Failing newspapers are one of the main reasons these days that media houses and journalists indulge into yellow journalism. When newspapers face serious losses, eventually they are bought by some media houses, who in turn try making them profitable by sensationalizing and misreporting news to such an extent that, the true essence and the meaning of the original story fades. Also, journalists these days have very little regard to report accuracy. It is basically the lack of Media ethics in a reporter/journalist, leading them to getting lax in whatever they report and not providing apt details about the piece of news or information they receive. Improper research work and interest leads them to make up a little part of the story, and exaggerating the other half. As media is still regarded or known to be an open profession, journalists with incomplete information of media and reporting principles are usually the ones who whether knowingly or unknowingly get into the mutated world of Yellow Journalism.
Journalism as a profession still pays reporters and journalists in peanuts. Being an inevitable part of Media, journalists are still one of the lowest paid in the Media sector, in spite of innumerable newspapers and media houses. Being paid less and required to work more, yellow journalism could just prove to be a shortcut to fame in a journalist’s life. Creating biased and overhyped news could gain them and their newspaper popularity and attention. There is such degree of increased competition between various media houses today that each newspaper tries its best to garner and attain that special attention before any other media house/newspaper can. It is just the lack of moral understanding, and lack of media and moral ethics among media professionals like journalists and reporters that Yellow Journalism still exists in the society, though immense efforts had been to eradicate such a misleading information branch from the society.
In a perfect world, news and media coverage houses may seem to exist to selflessly and honest deliver important and unbiased news to the public, whereas in reality, it is all very different. News media corporations are profit seeking companies. To maintain a healthy bottom line, corporations must create a market, and figure out what the public wants to consume, and accordingly sell news to them, and as public loves scandalous and outrageously hyped news, that is what newspapers and news channels provide them with. The society itself needs to undergo a change and people need to discourage such acts of yellow journalism. We should be the ones to refrain from it and not enjoy the exaggerated news created just to please us. Only once we make efforts to stop enjoying to such negative flak created by the media house, can then they stop boosting their profits by such dubious means.
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