While the lifestyle and culture of the nation we call home is distinguishable from any other nation in the world, the USA has a controversial nature when it comes to tackling hard issues the average American may not know about.

Journalism is a hard thing to do without getting caught up in legal trouble. The problem isn’t with the news itself; it’s how it’s delivered to the American people. Before we open this can of worms, let’s see where this style of journalism came from and how its style was formed.

The history of American journalism traces back to before the days of American independence in 1690 when the first edition of “Public Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestic” was published in Boston. Since then, journalism has continues to grow played was a key part in the war of independence when the United States attempted to break away from Britain for its various injustices.

Following that, one of the first amendments established in the new constitution was freedom of the press and freedom of speech. It was around that time the American press grew rapidly. It was already established as a key benefactor for not only political parties at the time but also religious institutions.

Over time, a new form of journalism surfaced as the concept of the “human interest story” grew and there was a refined value of news and a uniqueness of the story. As it continued to grow, one key event happened that would change the path of how journalism was perceived – the birth of “yellow journalism.” This was the first type of journalism that exposed corruption and helped inspire “muckraking,” also known as investigative journalism. It also created overly sensational stories but sometimes used headlines with large text to lure readers. Around the same time, the topic of media ethics surfaced and gave rise to questionable articles.

One early example of questionable journalism is The Dearborn Independent, a weekly magazine owned by Henry Ford and distributed free through Ford dealerships in the 1920s. The Independent’s contents contained conspiracy theories of anti-semitism. This bias kept growing until the 21st century with the advent of social media in the early 2000s when it became most ravenous. The most recent example occurred in 2015 during Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency when he called for concern about the media critiquing his statements. It wasn’t until a year later the term “fake news” became prevalent.

Allow me to Change your Mind

I don’t have a problem with anyone in the field of journalism, including newscasters who try to tell you what is going on in the world today; however, it feels like personal opinions are being treated as news. This includes social media where we see the darkest recesses of one’s own political opinion. The news has lost the purpose of what it wants to be and either falls to one side of the spectrum or the other with CNN and MSNBC as the left-wing news corporations and FOX News and OAN as prime right-wing news corporations.

News outlets focus on news stories that benefit their party and don’t bother to be sure what they report is true. To keep viewers glued to their seats, news media uses fear to make sure people keep watching. Then, they tell the actual news story at the end when they don’t have enough time to fully report it.

Another factor is that topics like this usually act like a springboard for other topics rather than the topic the news is about. Sometimes news outlets post conspiracy theories that would easily confuse the average viewer.

News outlets should go back to their roots, report facts and not take sides on any issue – that’s what opinion columns like this one are for.