At first, yellow journalism had nothing to do with reporting, but instead derived from a popular cartoon strip about life in New York's slums called Hogan's Alley, drawn ... When a U.S. read more
The same mechanism helped US entry into WW1. Currently a variety of yellow journalism dominates US media. At the onset of TV there were 3 major networks and the news department was not considered a profit center. Consequently they had some credibility. read more
There was a comic feature called “The Yellow Kid,” whose eponymous main character was a shaven-headed (a common method of fighting headlice in crowded tenements), jug-eared kid, who looked like he might have been a poor ancestor of MAD’s Alfred E. Neuman, and whose only article of clothing was a bright yellow nightshirt on which his dialogue was displayed. read more
By extension, the term yellow journalism is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion. The term is chiefly used in the US. In the UK, a roughly equivalent term is tabloid journalism, meaning journalism characteristic of tabloid newspapers, even if found elsewhere. read more