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The so-called “yellow journals” are glaring examples of newspapers built up on news and editorial policies shaped to attract undiscriminating readers by sensational methods. By constantly emphasizing sensational news and by “sensationalizing” and “melodramatizing” news that is not sufficiently startling, as well as by editorials stirring up class feeling among the masses against the monied and ruling classes, “yellow journals” have been able to outstrip all other papers in circulation.
Unquestionably the most serious aspect of the influence of sensational and yellow journalism is the distorted view of life thus given. Because these papers are widely read by the partially assimilated groups of foreign immigrants in large centres of population, like New York and Chicago, they exert a particularly dangerous influence by giving these future citizens a wrong conception of American society and government. That the false ideas of our life and institutions given to foreign elements of our population while they are in the process of becoming Americanized are a serious menace to this country, requires no proof. No matter who the readers may be, however, news that is “colored” to appear “yellow,” and misleading editorials, will always be dangerous to the public welfare.