Once in a great while, we can open the door just a crack and are able to peer into the hidden world of journalism. Reporters will be scurrying about with self-importance, informing their editors of the unbelievable piece that they have waiting on their laptop screen, sure to be accumulating massive amounts of likes and shares on the information superhighway.
Social media is everything to the modern-day reporter, without which, they are inconsequential. Writers with any degree of moxie can drum up unending attention surrounding their newest article, hopeful that some large publication will pick them up, assuring them of eternal recognition. In their day, the Woodwards and the Bernsteins were the crème de la crème of the Fourth Estate, the dogged investigative journalists who dug deep into their shadowy rolodex of contacts and sources for just a fleeting glimpse into the darkest corners of the human condition.
Today, one can barely imagine someone like Katie Couric or Jim Acosta making a valuable contribution to the craft other than existing as a bland footnote in the aggravating mold of Helen Thomas or Andrea Mitchell.
Once upon a time, sensational headlines and spotty, unnamed sources, as well as inferences and opinionated passages of text, passed for real news.
For the Conservative mind, this entire ruse of a journalistic enterprise in the form of the Associated Press may be unsettling in the very least, and at most, quite disturbingly reminiscent of all the dystopian scenarios rolled together into one terrifying reality. To be sure, the very nature of the bizarre practice of recording events in real time through the lens of insecurity, intrigue and scandal is dangerous to society at large. The practitioners of the written word to influence the outcomes of regulations, judgments and elections should be careful with their very powerful abilities to sway public opinion. Instead, we can see the reemergence of the horrible machinations of yellow journalism.
Known colloquially today as Fake News, yellow journalism was in the late 19th and early 20th Century what the mainstream media is in this day and age. Once upon a time, sensational headlines and spotty, unnamed sources, as well as inferences and opinionated passages of text, passed for real news. Going back to a description of what yellow journalism was reflects just how stunted and underdeveloped the craft of wordsmithing is these days.
According to the First Amendment Encyclopedia, “yellow journalism usually refers to sensationalistic or biased stories that newspapers present as objective truth.” In order to measure just how damaging yellow journalism has been, remember that newspapers have been attempting to shape public opinion from the very founding of this nation.
Yellow journalism became the meme of the day back in the 1890s and helped to shape the news as it appears in modern times.
Samuel Adams was a very faithful and dedicated member of the Sons of Liberty who were completely inculcated in the production of printed fliers and posters that attempted to incite Bostonians (as well as other American colony citizens) to rebellion. The Boston Massacre was a perfect example of one of the earliest forays into yellow journalism.
Through the ages, as the United States grew into a viable and healthy world power, the city of New York became the hub of activity and industry for newspapers and journals which influenced a national awakening of world events made local. If you were a businessman and you weren’t reading either the New York Journal (owned by William Randolph Hearst) or the New York World (owned by Joseph Pulitzer) then you were “behind the times.”
Not to get bogged down by the history of yellow journalism but suffice it to say that these two newspaper magnates and their publications became engaged in a war of headlines, one that dragged both companies down into the gutter. Yellow journalism became the meme of the day back in the 1890s and helped to shape the news as it appears in modern times.
Where the medium really ran into trouble, however, was during the 1950s when the blue-collar reporter was suddenly required to hold some sort of degree or diploma from one institution or another. This requirement forced men and women of word-craft into the desperate position of seeking universities and colleges that offered degrees in reporting.
Once the graduates began rolling out of these halls of higher learning, they were no longer just mere reporters of events around us in the community, but journalists whose job was to make the world a better place. They would achieve this by guiding those of lesser intellect and nuance through a practice of skilled storytelling, subtle or subliminal structuring of intimation, and finally, outright opinion cleverly masquerading as fact or truth.
The bias seeps from every pore of every news organization out there and the evidence for such Left-weighted issues is so abundant as to be redundant.
Prior to this period of enlightenment for the journalist, universities which were packed with Liberal/Progressive professors, had little to no influence on the majority of public opinion. Their ideology and notions of social justice and political impression were marginal, at best, in society at large. That radically changed, however, once journalists were discharged from these colleges and released upon the world through the nation’s newspapers and television news programs. For this reason, by the early 1970s, the complete transformation of the news network in the United States had occurred. Gone were the days of objectivity and any semblance of down-the-middle reporting.
Up and coming journalists from this period gradually moved into positions on the editorial and management staff, precluding the hiring of reporters from outside the university/college bubble. This necessitated a built-in pact of cult-like groupthink that exists even today, but in much greater form and cohesion. This groupthink has not only affected the printed word, but radio and television news as well.
National Public Radio (NPR) has sunk its fangs deeply into the American Left and refuses to part ways with that path, all the while assuring its listeners and anyone else who will pay attention that they are objective. They have even convinced most Congress members who serve today that they are, in fact, so trusted by the public as an honest source of news and information that they’ve secured unending grants and funding from the American taxpayer to pay for their spurious and unfounded attacks on the US Constitution, the country’s founding, and its Conservative leaders.
Think of the AP as the Walt Disney of news conglomerates, where it has literally absorbed all the mainstream print and televised networks into one large monstrosity of Progressive propaganda.
Just a few days ago, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released a video that delved into CNN’s major Leftist bias and how this was literally affecting their everyday output of the news. Dan Gainor, Vice President of the Media Research Center put it this way:
“It’s incredible that CNN is holding the debate when it’s not a neutral referee, it’s an advocate for the most-radical leftist policies. The Project Veritas videos are showing CNN for what it has become, the TV headquarters of The Resistance.”
The bias seeps from every pore of every news organization out there and the evidence for such Left-weighted issues is so abundant as to be redundant. No amount of denial of these facts is enough to convince a fed-up, weary public of the opposite opinion.
The Associated Press is a very glaring example of the groupthink of modern news. Think of the AP as the Walt Disney of news conglomerates, where it has literally absorbed all the mainstream print and televised networks into one large monstrosity of Progressive propaganda. Here’s the ABOUT acknowledgement on the AP’s own site:
“The AP is one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering, supplying a steady stream of news to its members, international subscribers and commercial customers.
AP is neither privately owned nor government-funded; instead, as a not-for-profit news cooperative owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members, it can maintain its single-minded focus on newsgathering and its commitment to the highest standards of objective, accurate journalism.”
Once the floodgates were opened in 1898 to the possibility that big news could monetize its sleaze and half-truths, there was no going back.
Ironically, the Associated Press, for all its own self-congratulatory statements and the holding of itself in such high regard (if they do say so, themselves) are the very “newsgatherers” who got Russia Collusion all wrong. In fact, it’s safe to say that they have had to issue more retractions than any other single news organization. Why? Well, because they simply ARE every other news organization…combined. They also got the 2016 election all wrong, relying on fluff polls that showed Hillary Clinton a shoe-in for the presidency. Yet, they claim that they are the “most trusted” source.
Really? That’s interesting, because NPR also makes that claim. As does CNN. So, which is it? Could it be that these news organizations are like the mom and pop sandwich shops you find on every corner which claim to have the “best coffee in town?” Exactly who determines that fact?
CNN is another great example of bias. In America, their ratings are in the toilet…and for very good reason. But that’s only half of the story. One often wonders why it is that they are seemingly so unwilling to change their format in order to bring these tanking ratings up to more respectable levels. How could their mother company of Time Warner (who merged with Turner Broadcasting Systems (TBS) which owns CNN) allow the once-great news network to flounder the way it has and not move to change its line-up?
Simply put, CNN has a closed contract with absolutely every airport in the United States, ensuring that CNN (and CNN alone) is shown on their televisions in their airline gates. This contract carries with it a monstrous price tag that CNN’s mother company is more than willing to pay, as long as it puts forward the illusion that this is a very popular and trusted news network, despite more than three-quarters of America not tuning in on a daily basis.
Additionally, CNN is massively popular overseas, particularly in Europe, where it also enjoys a monopoly of sorts. While there are other networks that can be found worldwide, CNN has a special niche cut out for itself in the European networks that are set in concrete. Since many of these nations only have two or three public channels (with one of them being CNN) Europeans are treated to a panoply of Trump insults, scandalous reports, and most importantly, anti-Conservative bias that feeds the Socialist-leaning populace of the European Union. Many wonder why the people of Europe cannot stand the president there. This is precisely why.
As it turns out, yellow journalism never really dissolved or disappeared from our news organizations. It merely transformed into our modern Fake News industrial complex that pumps out as many scandal-ridden headlines as the papers and chyrons will allow room for, so long as the public is willing to continue to consume this garbage.
Once the floodgates were opened in 1898 to the possibility that big news could monetize its sleaze and half-truths, there was no going back. Journalists of today have been so corrupted and bastardized as to be readily mistaken for the politicians who reside in our highest seats of authority. In fact, there’s very little criteria that distinguishes between media, politics and entertainment. As the Fake News industrial complex has fused with the Democratic National Committee, the Deep State, the Hollywood establishment, and globalist puppet masters worldwide, the tiny space carved out by independent news sources has now become the prime target of this groupthink cult of media.
And if we’re not careful, even the blood from our independent toils may be running yellow very soon.