Illustration: Liu Rui

By Eric Fish

Recently while surfing the website of a mainstream Chinese media outlet, one headline caught my eye: "Taking the X-rated out of pole-dancing."

After my male instinct enticed me to click, I watched several sexy pole dancers seductively practice their art while wearing next to nothing. While I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the "report," the cursory interviews laced in between shots of the titillating maneuvers weren't enough to convince me that it was legitimate news worthy of coverage by a respectable media organization.

This outlet isn't alone in its attempt to draw in viewers with sex disguised as news. Across many different media organizations in China, it's common to see disproportionate coverage and photo spreads of fashion shows and bikini contests.

As China's media become more marketized, it's inevitably becoming more competitive. Media outlets in China, like countless others around the world before them, are realizing that anything able to grab someone's eye, be it legitimate news or otherwise, will give a boost to audiences and profits. And when one outlet delivers a trivial or misleading yet eye-catching story, the others have little choice but to match or outdo it. Otherwise they'll watch their viewers flock to the competition. Thus begins the cycle of yellow journalism.

The term yellow journalism was coined during the early development of the US media in the late 19th century when media barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer's respective newspapers, the New York Journal and the New York World, were in cutthroat competition.

The two constantly tried to outsell one another by using suggestive pictures, misleading head-lines, and sometimes outright fabricated information. The apex of US yellow journalism came when the two newspapers' fear mongering and sensationalism led to the Spanish- American War in 1898.

Eventually, most readers became numb to the blatant sensationalism and demanded more reliability and legitimacy from their news sources, but only after great damage had already been done.

Currently China's media are in a vulnerable stage when the freedom and incentive to resort to yellow journalism has emerged, but the public's consciousness of it hasn't. Several parallels can be found between the present Chinese media and the US media of the late 19th century that suggest China is entering a similar era of yellow journalism.

In the past year a slew of pseudo-celebrities have garnered significant media hype for actions that could scarcely be considered newsworthy. Wang Zifei, the pretty girl in red who watched Barack Obama speak at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was talked about for weeks by major media outlets last November. And Luo Yufeng, the average looking girl who handed out fliers listing her extravagant requirements for a husband, has become a media starlet and was even the subject of a 40-minute Jiangsu TV station documentary.

Misleading headlines have also become common practice in recent years.

However, the most sinister form of yellow journalism is when outright fabrications are used.

Last June during a CCTV news segment sensationalizing the effects of Internet pornography, an interview was conducted with a college student who claimed his roommate became absent-minded after viewing Internet pornography. It was later revealed that the student was an intern for CCTV and the interview was completely staged.

When this kind of yellow journalism starts to be utilized, there's no telling how far out of control it can spiral. As history has shown, it can even lead to war.

While the temptation to use yellow journalism is great, every media outlet should recognize that using it will only lead to perpetual one-upmanship that serves to break the public's trust and harms the long-term interests of the media, as well as the nation.

The author is a teacher and freelance writer in Nanjing. viewpoint@globaltimes.com.cn