You have heard the saying a million times: "Actions speak louder than words", but have you ever thought that saying it backwards could also have a meaning? Well it does. And I couldn't find a better example than Yellow Journalism.
This concept was used for the first time around 200 years ago, during The Spanish-American War, which many actually believe was the main reason why the war even became a war. Journalists manipulated and dramatized the events going on at that time between the United States and Spain in order to influence thousands of people's opinions.
Today, it is so common to see Yellow Journalism in our every day lives that is not even that relevant to us anymore, we're so used to it. Newspapers are constantly competing by modifying stories and creating crazy headlines to summarize events.
How about the Swine Flu? Do you remember how crazy everybody went last year, thinking that the whole world would get infected? Egyptian newspaper "Al-Wafd" had on its front page: "Half the World Population Is Under the Threat of Swine Flu". Were we really? As we see it now, not even a quarter of the population became infected, and we all know that there wasn't really that much of a reason to panic the way some of we did. Just as we now know that there weren't logical or good enough reasons to go into war with Spain. The world was just so concerned of what the media had to say, waiting for alarming news that told us how much closer we were getting to being affected.
It's insane how powerful a few words can be. They can drive us to create feelings of hope, fear, passion, anything they might possibly want us to feel. So we realize how in many cases words can speak so loud, to be heard by the whole world. Sometimes even louder than an action itself.
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