Don't call me mellow yellow

I read an interesting article on Salon.com recently about another article that was printed on Forbes.com titled "Don't Marry a Career Woman." According to the writer, and I use that term loosly, career woman are the opposite of good marriage material. In fact, he makes the claim that woman making more than $30,000 are less likely to be happy with family and children and more likely to cheat. He bases his theories on research statistics, of course.

This author also wrote a previous article comparing marriage to prostitution.

Needless to say, the reaction to his "writing" was swift. Within a few hours, the article was removed and then replaced in the opinion section and billed as part of discussion series. The point, counterpoint are now available on the site.

Forbes magazine is usually a pretty good publication. It's had some great articles to its credit, but this is an example of another kind of journalism, or yellow journalism, which is defined as "Journalism that exploits, distorts, or exaggerates the news to create sensations and attract readers." Sound familiar?

I have expressed in this forum before that I am increasingly dissatisfied with the state of the media. I am a professionally trained journalist and when I was in school, yellow journalism was a derisive term. Today it is the norm.

Personal opinions and conjecture should not be part of a news story, but because of instant accessability, news outlets are competing heavily to report any information, even if it's false. So they started creating sensational headlines and drawing irrational conclusions to intrigue readers. Hence headlines such as "The Economics of Prostitution."

While this is terrific material for a rant -- and I could go on, but I won't -- the scariest part of yellow journalism is that it is unrecognized. Shit is published daily and taken for truth -- discussed at dinner time and shared with colleagues. That's what really scares me.

I've been telling my brother-in-law that if the government ever found a way to control the media, they could rule this country. Thank God the media hates Bush!

At least they got one thing right.