Yellow Journalism

The competition between American newspapers in the late 1800's led to some very inventive ways of driving sales... such as inventing stories, for instance. Also common was the use of spectacular headlines to sell stories about very mundane topics, a tradition that many websites continue to practice today in social media. In the 1890's, all the tricks and lies collectively came to be labeled as "yellow journalism," and this label was made a stigma that scared customers away from newspapers that were seen to practice them... eventually leading to the high journalistic standards expected of respectable news sources today.

        Of course, some news services are still making up or puffing up stories to sell themselves; and some of the older false stories are still turning up as true in new places. In this page I list only articles that are statively false, and that were clearly created or expanded by either an individual reporter or a news organization... which does narrow the list quite a bit!