Yellow journalism, or the yellow press, is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism. 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. Wikipedia, Yellow Journalism
Today this is called Fake News.
Thomas Jefferson
“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper…Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.” [President Thomas Jefferson]
John Swinton
"The job of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie, blather, distort, to flatter the god of money and sell his country and his fellow people for his daily bread... We are vassals and tools of rich people in the background. We are puppets, they pull the shoelaces and we dance. Our talents, possibilities and lives are all other people's property. We are intellectual prostitutes ". [John Swinton (1829-1901) editor-in-in-chief of the New York Times]
This quote by Mark Twain, “There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press,” highlights a paradox that feels timeless.
Twain suggests that while society fiercely defends the right of the press to speak freely, it rarely provides ordinary people with protection from the consequences of that freedom—especially when the press becomes biased, sensational, or driven by power rather than truth.
His words warn that freedom without accountability can become a weapon, and that the greatest danger is not censorship, but manipulation. A press that prioritizes influence over integrity can shape public opinion, destroy reputations, and control narratives while remaining shielded by the very laws created to ensure fairness.
Twain is not calling for silencing the press—he is calling for responsibility equal to freedom.
Because when information becomes a tool of pressure rather than illumination, the people lose the ability to think independently, and democracy becomes fragile, not from silence, but from noise.
See Also
Calumny
Defamation
Error
Invalidation
Libel
press
Slander
Vilification
Was Keely a Fraud