Today we have an entire generation of people who shout “fake news” at the slightest hint of something they believe to be untrue. Sadly, this shows what our education system has done for these people; nothing.
The term “fake news” was known as “yellow press” at one time. Many historians claim it originated in the competition over the New York City newspaper market between newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.
At first, yellow journalism had nothing to do with reporting but derived from a cartoon strip about life in the slums of New York called “Hogan’s Alley,” drawn by Richard F. Outcault. Published in color by the New York World, which Pulitzer owned, the comic had the Yellow Kid.
In 1896, to boost sales of his New York Journal, Hearst hired Outcault away from Pulitzer, launching a bidding war between the two publishers over the cartoonist. Hearst won, but Pulitzer refused to give in and hired a new cartoonist to continue drawing the cartoon for his paper.
The fight over the Yellow Kid gave rise to the term yellow journalism. And once coined, it extended to the sensationalist style employed by the two publishers in their profit-driven coverage of world events.
However, long before Hearst and Pulitzer created their publishing dynasty, there was Joeseph Goodman of the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada Territory. On staff, Goodman employed two men who famously wrote “fake news” articles called “quaints.”
William Wright wrote under the nom de plume “Dan DeQuille,” while Sam Clemens first signed his humorous letters with “Josh,” he became better known as “Mark Twain.”
There is the 1862 “The Petrified Man” by Twain and his 1863 “Empire City Massacre.” In 1867, DeQuille wrote “The Traveling Stones of Pahranagat Valley,” and “Solar Armor,” published in 1874.
The pair followed in the footsteps of Benjamin Franklin, who used hoaxes for satirical ends, to expose foolishness and vice to the light of public censure. His first hoax, “Silence Dogood,” was hot off the press in 1722.
In 1835, The New York Sun announced that the British astronomer Sir John Herschel had discovered life on the moon using a new telescope “of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle.” According to the article, Herschel reported seeing lunar bison, fire-wielding biped beavers, and winged “man-bats.”
On Sat., Apr. 13, 1844, the New York Sun announced that the European balloonist Monck Mason had completed the first-ever transatlantic balloon crossing — accidentally. He had taken off from England, intending to go to Paris, but had been blown off course and ended up floating to South Carolina and penned by none other than Edgar Allen Poe.
The Los Angeles Evening Express published “The Bigamist of San Bernardino” in 1873, and a year later, the New York World ran the article “The Man-Eating Tree of Madagascar.” Then there is “The Global Warming Hoax of 1874” that ran in the Kansas City Times, The New York Hearlds “The Central Park Zoo Escape,” also written in 1874, and in 1875, The Chicago Times printed “The Chicago Theater Fire.”
Perhaps it is time to do some more reading and less whining.
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