All businesses cater to their customers who whoever pays the bills. While still biased, major media sources are more responsible about what they "print" because more people are looking to find fault with their product. I would suggest that there is more "yellow journalism" on the right than on the left.
Cherry picking bad news stories is pretty easy to do. As newspapers fade and online stories rise, we see more and more people having access to more and more sources, much of which is free. The demand for eyeballs and clicks has forced significant changes in how information is presented. Some of those changes are pretty nice. Looking back 50 or 100 years it is pretty easy to find poor use of headlines and stories that were used to fuel political objectives.
Yellow journalism[edit]
The New York Journal and New York World, owned respectively by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, gave Maine intense press coverage, employing tactics that would later be labeled "yellow journalism." Both papers exaggerated and distorted any information they could obtain, sometimes even fabricating news when none that fitted their agenda was available. For a week following the sinking, the Journal devoted a daily average of eight and a half pages of news, editorials and pictures to the event. Its editors sent a full team of reporters and artists to Havana, including Frederic Remington,[57] and Hearst announced a reward of $50,000 "for the conviction of the criminals who sent 258 American sailors to their deaths."[58]
The World, while overall not as lurid or shrill in tone as the Journal, nevertheless indulged in similar theatrics, insisting continually that Maine had been bombed or mined. Privately, Pulitzer believed that "nobody outside a lunatic asylum" really believed that Spain sanctioned Maine's destruction. Nevertheless, this did not stop the World from insisting that the only "atonement" Spain could offer the U.S. for the loss of ship and life, was the granting of complete Cuban independence. Nor did it stop the paper from accusing Spain of "treachery, willingness, or laxness" for failing to ensure the safety of Havana Harbor.[59] The American public, already agitated over reported Spanish atrocities in Cuba, was driven to increased hysteria.[60]
William Randolph Hearst's reporting on Maine whipped up support for military action against the Spanish in Cuba regardless of their actual involvement in the sinking. He frequently cited various naval officers saying that the explosion could not have been an on-board accident. He quoted an "officer high in authority" as saying "The idea that the catastrophe resulted from an internal accident is preposterous. In the first place, such a thing has never occurred before that I have ever heard of either in the British navy or ours."[61]
