Jude Magnotti ‘26
EE Editor-In-Chief
There are few things that humans care about more than the truth. Truth about people, truth about events, truth about LIFE. At our core, we all have a burning curiosity, a desire, a spark that drives us to search for answers in whatever way we can. In an ever-increasingly tumultuous world with more complex problems and everyday issues than ever before, people have been left starved, desperate for answers on how to tackle the problems today…or if there are even more problems we don’t know about. This desire is where the news, and specifically journalism, thrives. It educates, it informs, it prevents the common person from being left completely in the dark about the world’s issues, no matter how big or small. However, at the same time, it equally manipulates that desire for truth by not always presenting it with integrity.
It is the news outlet’s job to stir outrage, conversation, and to pervert that longing of yours into a fury of emotion that drives their ratings up. As much as we would like to imagine the news as an unfiltered truth, all outlets contain biases, imperfections, and personal intentions that dilute the legitimacy of the information reaching you.
In the late 19th century, the practice of “yellow journalism” thrived under the controversial articles of the New York Journal, funded by the ambitions of William Randolph Hearst. Through sensationalized headlines, Hearst even managed to gain the support of the American public to start a war with Spain after the destruction of the U.S.S. Maine. Soon enough, this practice of unethical and filtered journalism spread to even the most respectable of publications, including Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.
Extending to the 20th century, we saw how obsessive paparazzi and media can even lead to someone’s death. Hounded by the media 24/7, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in 1997 after trying to avoid a trailing mob of paparazzi.
Success in journalism is no longer based on who can report the facts the best, but rather who gets the juiciest and most headline-capturing story FIRST. Now, as the world of technology has only grown larger and larger to accommodate the platforms of social media and online entertainment, yellow journalism has been exacerbated to unprecedented levels. So much so that it has essentially been weaponized in the form of misinformation and controversy. Instead of presenting an unfiltered truth to educate its citizens, the news is being used to shape and mold people’s news further from reality and closer to polarized insanity.
Even in the most recent election, we saw the impact of misinformation and outrage become pervasive in the media, becoming a major factor in Donald Trump’s election to a second term. The reality is that yellow journalism has been taken to such an extent that it is next to impossible to find unbiased material on issues ranging from safety of the country to the preservation of Democracy.
Unfortunately, it gets even worse. Not only is the benefit of journalism being perverted for the consumer, but it no longer brings benefit to the people actually writing the media in the first place. Not only do many individuals in the media lack integrity, but with the rise of AI, they are slowly being replaced altogether. Big news companies no longer need humans to write scripts, articles, or really any sort of media.
Even in this publication, there have been instances of people trying to upload ChatGPT articles before. Simply put, the physical journalist is no longer a valuable commodity. And if we’re not careful, pretty soon none of us will be. However, with all that in mind, I still believe that there is a reason to have hope. A reason to believe that no matter how much misinformation or clickbait there is out there, someone will also stand equally ready to fight for the truth. We have an entire generation of aspiring young writers eager to join the battle. This publication is a perfect example of that –if not as journalists, as common citizens, able to educate their fellow man. However, journalists and writers alone are not enough. Like most things in history, the battle for truth will ultimately fall to the people themselves…