Hearst was the godfather of "yellow press" tabloids. I recently saw a PBS documentary of his life; and it seems he initially despised unprofessional journalism. But once income taxes were instituted in this country, and the Great Depression arrived, his many newspapers were losing business to racy tabloids, and he was nearly in bankruptcy, so decided to fight fire with fire and out-compete their tall tales with his own. I don't think that analysis is entirely true, because he also jump-started the Spanish-American war long before by publishing an account and an illustration of a totally fictitious event. The point is, people gravitate toward the sensational, true or not. Murdoch seems to be the current reincarnation of Hearst and his shenanigans.
Now the internet has made that propensity even worse. Nonsensical falsehood pays well. Every grocery and supermarket checkout lane had a magazine rack with National Enquirer prominent, fully of pasted-up composite fake photos so amateurishly done that the scissors marks were still visible; yet people still believed a lot of that nonsense. ... Liz and deceased Elvis aboard the same UFO as Bigfoot, and so forth.
