(3) Less harmful, but more superficially conspicuous, is the tendency toward the fabrication of imaginary news, to attract attention and sell the paper.  Huge headlines announce some exciting event, which below is inconspicuously acknowledged to be but a rumor.  It will be denied the next day in an obscure corner, while the front page is devoted to some new sensation.  This “yellow journalism” is very irritating to one who cares more for facts than for thrills; and the more reputable newspapers have stood out against this disgraceful habit of their less scrupulous rivals.  Mr. Pulitzer, the son of the famous editor of the New York “World,” in an address at the opening of the Columbia University School of Journalism, spoke vehemently against this evil:  “The newspaper which sells the public deliberate fakes instead of facts is selling adulterated goods just as surely as does the rascal who puts salicylic acid in canned meats or arsenical coloring in preserves; and it ought to be subject to the same penalties for adulteration as are these other adulterators.  The fakir is a liar if he is guilty of a fake that injures people, he is not only a vicious liar but often a moral assassin as well; but in either event he is a liar, and it is only by treating him uncompromisingly as such that he may be corrected if he is not yet a confirmed fakir, or rooted out if he is an inveterate fakir.”  There is surely enough, for those who have eyes to see, that is dramatic and exciting in actual life without depending upon fictitious news.  Chesterton berates the contemporary press for failing to give us the thrill of reality.  It “offends as being not sensational or violent enough; . . . does not merely fail to exaggerate life-it positively underrates it.  With the whole world full of big and dubious institutions, with the whole wickedness of civilization staring them in the face, their idea of being bold and bright is to attack the War Office. . . .  Something which is an old joke in fourth-rate comic papers.” [Footnote:  “The Mildness of the Yellow Press,” chap.  VIII of Heretics.]

(4) Another danger of our irresponsible journalism lies in pandering to prejudices and antipathies, in stirring up class hatred or national jingoism.  Evil motives are attributed to foreign powers; the German Emperor has designs upon South America; the Japanese are preparing to invade our Pacific Coast.  Insignificant words of individuals are headlined and treated as portentous; foreign peoples are caricatured; our national “honor” is held to be in danger daily.  Or the capitalists are pictured as universally fat and greedy and unscrupulous; anarchism is encouraged-as in the case of the murderer of McKinley, who was directly incited to his deed by the violent diatribes of a contemporary newspaper.  Such demagoguery might flourish even with strict regard for truthfulness; but it becomes far worse when, as usual, in its appeal to popular prejudices, it exaggerates and invents and suppresses facts.