Muckrakers 100 Year Later, or, Nu-Yellow Journalism: As Awful As Nu-Metal But More Insidious, or, PICTURE TIME!

"I hail as a benefactor... every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in turn remembers that that attack is of use only if it absolutely truthful.”
--Theodore Roosevelt

Absolutely truthful. Keep that phrase in mind.

Teddy was referring to 'muckrakers', the early 20th century writers who exposed corruption in government or brought social issues to light with a sensationalistic style to catch the attention of the masses. They were heroic figures, but 'muckraking' had a heroic ring to it only for as long as those writers remained "absolutely truthful". When the focus drifted from sensationalism in order to expose truth to sensationalism in order to make money, a new term was born: 'yellow journalism', which is characterized by "exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists" in order to sell newspapers. William Randolph Hearst is considered the first media mogul to make an art out of this approach, but he was certainly not the last.

So muckrakers bring up real, truthful issues with sensationalistic writing while yellow journalists are essentially tabloids with press credentials, drumming up controversy where there is none in order to make money or alter public opinion.

Which category would these fall in, do you think?
This picture, coincidentally, showed up on Memorial Day, when flag-waving is at its height. The issue: a woman working in a Texas hospital was told to remove an American flag from her office because a coworker took offense. That was all FOXNews bothered to focus on, along with a healthy dose of xenophobic overtones (the woman who took issue happened to have immigrated from Africa 15 years ago).

Turns out the actual issue was not an attack on patriotism, flags, or America; it was an attack on a rude coworker. This woman brought an extremely large flag (15 sq. ft.-- so damn big she can't hold it out herself) into an extremely small office which she shares with 3 other people. The issue was never the American flag, but the size of a personal item which took up shared space in an office environment. No one was attacking America, they were attacking an inconsiderate person. Can anyone honestly blame the other woman in the office for complaining?

I support gay rights 100%, fully, and completely. But if you share an office with me and show up with a gigantic rainbow flag to drape across the room, I'm going to be pissed about it.

This headline was a concerted effort to recast the most uncontroversial of occurrences (breaking news: woman hogs office space!!) and drum up controversy in hopes of not only gaining attention and making money, but pandering to a specific readership and insinuating that certain falsities appear true.

Let's take another look:

North Korea allegedly performed an underground nuclear test. They also tested some short-range missiles and allegedly moved several long-range missiles to silos on the west coast. Everyone else's headline: "UN Condemns N. Korea Actions" or "N. Korea Reportedly Testing Nuclear Weapons". FOXNEWS?

Wow. Firstly, nowhere did anyone claim that N. Korea was threatening or aiming at the U.S. Secondly, for every missile they may have aimed at us, we have 100 aimed at them, which this article (unsurprisingly) doesn't mention. This is even more egregious because "moving long-range missiles to the west coast" puts us no more in danger than having them on the east coast. Ever see the size of North Korea? It looks like one of Maryland's less impressive bowel movements. Those missiles are capable of traveling several thousand miles-- a 50 kilometer move doesn't magically put us in extreme danger (though I'm certain Rupert Murdoch wouldn't be upset if some people believed that.)

Up next:

This is just a blatant mischaracterization and complete misrepresentation. Yes, GM is set for bankruptcy. But bankruptcy does not mean death. In fact, GM is going nowhere. It'll just be restructured in an attempt to create a business model THAT ACTUALLY FUCKING WORKS. It may and it may not, but calling bankruptcy 'death' is a bullshit exaggeration designed to fill Americans with dread and sympathy.

Up next:

This killed me for one important reason: it didn't even pretend to be partial or maintain a healthy perspective. This article went far beyond 'partisan' to 'intentionally blind'.

The issue at hand is a mini-vacation President Obama and his wife took to New York, where they ate dinner and caught a Broadway show.

Yes, American taxpayers picked up the tab for Obama to fly in a jet to New York to have a night off from being the President of the United States. But here comes a shocker: any time that any President goes anywhere, it is paid for with tax money.

When George W. Bush flew back and forth, often more than once in a week, from the White House to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, taxpayers funded that. Same jets. Same Secret Service. Same press corps. Same staffers.

According to CBSNews, between his January 2001 inauguration and May of 2008, George W. Bush spent 879 days in Crawford, Texas. And that doesn't include mini-vacations at Camp David or the number of days he spent in Crawford during the last 8 months of his Presidency. All told, Bush spent somewhere in the ballpark of 1,000 days on vacation. Or, to look at it differently, more than two and a half years of an 8 year Presidency.

This isn't an indictment of Bush's work habits: undoubtedly he did plenty of work from the ranch. But the fact remains that every single god damn time that man stepped on a plane to fly to Texas, taxpayers paid for it.

Did FOXNews bother to mention ANY of this while quoting low-level RNC members furious at the waste of money? If you've ever read a FOXNews story, you know the answer to that question.

Fair dinkum if you have a problem with your money being used to fund Presidential downtime: that is a valid gripe. But to only have a problem with your money funding a certain President's downtime, or to deny that your money funded every other President's downtime is obscenely hypocritical.

It's shameful, sensationalistic, poorly disguised nu-yellow journalism. No major media outlet is completely free of this taint, but only one network has turned rabble-rousing and partisan pandering into a 360 degree business model, and that is FOX.

Yes, I get on my FOX soapbox every once in a while. But it's honestly not the writing itself (most of the time). It's the packaging. It's the selective choice of stories, headlines, and photographs intended not to portray any impartial truth but to incite viewers to predictable reactions of sympathy, fear, outrage, etc. It's emotional and mental manipulation. It's using a high pedestal to swing low and sway an audience.

Does this upset anyone but me?

I have two more quick examples, both of which are recent tragedies: the murder of a doctor, and the murder of a US Soldier.

I don't have a picture for the first because, for once, the picture is not the issue, but I know you heard the story: an abortion doctor was murdered at his church in Kansas, and immediately that became the headline for every news outlet.

But an hour later, the headline shifted on FOXNews to something different: "Pro-Lifers Fear Backlash", an article hinting that Democrats plan to use this tragedy as a means of ramming Sotomayor's nomination through Congress.

This is a case study on the power of suggestion, and of using media not to report facts, but to create sensation. How fucking many people, honestly, read about the murder of an abortion doctor and connected it to Sonia Sotomayor in the hour between the event and FOX's new headline?

How many made that connection in the hour after?

You can almost feel the breeze as a large, clueless segment of middle America furrows its brow and nods in unison.

Finally, my last example comes from yesterday.

A US soldier was shot last weekend outside a recruiting office by a young man who converted to Islam about ten years ago. The article itself is very fair, saying that there is no evidence this young man was part of any sort of terrorist group effort to attack service members, and stating via a terrorism expert that "the vast majority of [Muslim] converts are nonviolent, but a few embrace the teachings of extremist religious mentors."

So it's a complete shame what happened, right? And the shooter is a complete prick, right? And he should go to prison for a long time, right? But we shouldn't blame a faith which 1 billion people worldwide practice peacefully, or somehow suggest that being Muslim entails anti-American sentiment, right?

Right, FOXNews?

Oh... sorry I asked.