Ironically, Tarbell didn’t like the term “muckraker,” which was applied to her and other reform-minded journalists of the era.

Not surprisingly, foes of the yellow press were more eager to disparage than define. Thus were the yellow journals accused of such malevolent effects as "corrupting the young and debauching the old, championing vice and lewdness, and defying respectability and decency."39 The practice of yellow journalism was likened, moreover, to a "contest of madmen for the primacy of the sewer."40

The Journal gloated about its extravagant spending on newsgathering. Not atypical was this claim, in which the Journal disparaged its rivals, notably the New York Sun: "The reason the old journalism doesn't like the Journal is that the Journal gets the news, no matter what it costs. The Sun and its kind cannot afford to spend money since the Journal has taken their readers away from them, and the probability is they would not do so if they could afford it. They are still living in the Silurian age."16

For all its flaws and virtues, yellow journalism exerted a powerful influence in American journalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Yellow journalism was much decried but its salient features often were emulated. The genre was appealing and distinctive in its typography, in its lavish use of illustrations, in its aggressive newsgathering techniques.

What actually caused the Maine to explode -- a Spanish mine or an accident in the ship's forward ammunition magazine -- is still a mystery. A Congressional investigation at the time was inconclusive, but that didn't stop the yellow reporting. The first story in Pulitzer's New York World carried a banner headline that left little doubt about who was responsible: ''Maine Explosion Caused by Bomb or Torpedo?'' The Journal published a diagram of what it called a secret ''infernal machine'' that struck the ship like a deadly torpedo -- apparently the figment of some journalist's imagination.

Many factors altered this plight by the close of thecentury. Possibly most significant is that journalistsbegan to flex their muscle by the 1890s. Referred to as“yellow journalism,” this style of writing derived fromdubious motives. Most notably, “yellow journalism”was magnified by the newspaper circulation battlebetween two publishers, William Randolph Hearstand Joseph Pulitzer. Graphic illustrations commis-sioned from some of the country’s most talentedartists and stories written by premiere authors andjournalists of the day exaggerated the plight of Cubansunder Spanish rule in the early 1890s and fanned theflames of war