Manic Monday – Yellow

I will warn you now, this is an uncharacteristic serious post for me. But I figured I can throw in a serious post once every few months to keep everyone on their toes, right?

Yellow journalism - a pejorative reference to journalism that features scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or other unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or individual journalists.

I don’t know if everyone knows this about me, but I not only consider myself a writer because I have an incredibly entertaining blog. I also have a degree in journalism, and once upon a time I did a lot of technical and documentation writing before taking on the career of a stay-at-home mom.

Therefore, I have a soft spot for communication issues and media law in general, as well as the lengths to which “journalists” will go to get a story.

One of the most blatant instances of yellow journalism that has always stuck with me happened by USA Today in 1992.

In addition to being a journalist, I am also a huge fan of tennis. Arthur Ashe was one of America’s great heroes, proving not only to be an amazing tennis player, but also to be a practical and productive activist. He was a great man.

Mr. Ashe officially retired from tennis in 1980 after suffering a heart attack and undergoing a quadruple bypass. In 1983, he needed an additional bypass, after which he received a blood transfusion. Five years later, he discovered he had acquired the AIDS virus, almost definitely as a result of the blood transfusion, which had occurred two years before mandatory testing for the HIV virus was required in donated blood.

Believing a public announcement would infringe on his family's right to privacy, particularly that of his young daughter; Camera, he revealed his illness only to his closest friends. But in April 1992, Mr. Ashe discovered that USA Today was preparing to follow up rumors that he was HIV-positive. The newspaper's editors told Mr. Ashe that if he would not confirm the rumors, they would attempt to find someone who would.

"Match point had come, and I had lost it," Mr. Ashe explained. "All I could do now was try to control the announcement itself, to have it heard directly from me."

Mr. Ashe made a public announcement and told the world he was stricken with full-blown AIDS. The fact that he had been forced into going public with his private turmoil made people think about the rights of the press and the rights to privacy.

Mr. Ashe was angry that "this newspaper; any newspaper or any part of the media, could think it had a right to tell the world I had AIDS." Yet he seized this as a motivational tool for educating the public and combating AIDS. He created the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS, received the first Annual AIDS Leadership Award from the Harvard AIDS Institute, and addressed the United Nations on World AIDS Day.

It was Mr. Ashe’s inability to fight off pneumonia that finally took his life on February 6, 1993, leaving his wife and 6-year-old daughter.

More than 5,000 people filed by his casket in the Virginia Governor's Mansion, mourning the loss of a child from the segregated South who had become a gift to the world, a victim of years of illness who had fought to erase decades of injustice, a man who, says Roy S. Johnson, "had the frailest of bodies but moved mountains."

With my background in journalism, I am quite familiar with the importance of getting a scoop. But, I can also tell the difference between news and sensational yellow journalism, which is employed for no other reason than to sell newspapers.

I would like to think we live in a society where ethical journalism and the importance of people mean more than making money.

I have not picked up a USA Today since April 1992. And I don’t ever plan to again.