Yellow Journalism

Yellow journalism, in short, is biased opinion masquerading as objective fact. Moreover, the practice of yellow journalism involves sensationalism, distorted stories, and misleading images for the sole purpose of boosting newspaper sales and exciting public opinion.

What is the remedy to yellow journalism? Simply double- and triple-checking one's sources and reading between the lines.

Yellow journalism was prominent in some of our nations most heralded newspapers and occurred some years ago. It was the birth of the code of ethics most journalists and their papers now adopt.

I wonder whether the all of our area newspapers has a code of ethics they follow and what it says. I found the code written by the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.

Some of the items found in their code of ethics include:

1. When including a quote make sure they are not taken out of context. Include enough of the entire quote to represent fairly what was actually said.
2. If the article includes a criticism of someone they need to give him/her a chance to respond in the same story
3. Source, source and source again
4. Be accountable
5. All articles should be based on or characterized by good judgment and/or sound thinking

All the citizens in a locality would benefit from fair and unbiased news reporting. More good would be accomplished since less time would be wasted trying to find out 'what is really going on'. Fact based reporting would disseminate the correct information so the best path for the majority could be chosen and endorsed by the same.


If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: "President Can't Swim." ~Lyndon B. Johnson