News consumers must demand ethics from news outlets

By Ron Friesen / Herald Forum

I am so embarrassed by the news media in the United States. Our standards for news have virtually sunk to the level of “yellow journalism” that dominated newspapers during the Industrial Revolution of the late-1800s and early 1900s.

And guess who understands this and manipulates the news better than anyone in our history? Donald Trump.

“If it bleeds, it leads”: This is still the foundation of news reporting, which William R. Hurst discovered with his newspaper’s sensationalist reporting of crime as he was competing with Joseph Pulitzer and his New York paper at the end of the 1800s. He capitalized on peoples’ primitive reaction to danger, which is fight or flee. Of course, before fighting or fleeing, we have to recognize the danger. And that is exactly what yellow journalism of the time did.

Headlines proclaimed danger from criminals, weather, illnesses, other races and cultures and warned us that this could all happen to us at any time. A lot of the “news” was exaggerated or made up. But who cared? Newspapers sold by the bundle! Profits went up. Publishers got rich!

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/forum-news-consumers-must-demand-ethics-from-news-outlets/