<P> Their Sunday entertainment features included the first color comic strip pages, and some theorize that the term yellow journalism originated there, while as noted above, the New York Press left the term it invented undefined . Hogan's Alley, a comic strip revolving around a bald child in a yellow nightshirt (nicknamed The Yellow Kid), became exceptionally popular when cartoonist Richard F. Outcault began drawing it in the World in early 1896 . When Hearst predictably hired Outcault away, Pulitzer asked artist George Luks to continue the strip with his characters, giving the city two Yellow Kids . The use of "yellow journalism" as a synonym for over-the - top sensationalism in the U.S. apparently started with more serious newspapers commenting on the excesses of "the Yellow Kid papers ." </P> <P> In 1890, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis published "The Right to Privacy", considered the most influential of all law review articles, as a critical response to sensational forms of journalism, which they saw as an unprecedented threat to individual privacy . The article is widely considered to have led to the recognition of new common law privacy rights of action . </P> <P> Pulitzer and Hearst are often adduced as the cause of the United States' entry into the Spanish--American War due to sensationalist stories or exaggerations of the terrible conditions in Cuba . However, the vast majority of Americans did not live in New York City, and the decision - makers who did live there probably relied more on staid newspapers like the Times, The Sun, or the Post . James Creelman wrote an anecdote in his memoir that artist Frederic Remington telegrammed Hearst to tell him all was quiet in Cuba and "There will be no war ." Creelman claimed Hearst responded "Please remain . You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war ." Hearst denied the veracity of the story, and no one has found any evidence of the telegrams existing . Historian Emily Erickson states: </P> <P> Serious historians have dismissed the telegram story as unlikely...The hubris contained in this supposed telegram, however, does reflect the spirit of unabashed self - promotion that was a hallmark of the yellow press and of Hearst in particular . </P>

How was yellow journalism a cause of the spanish american war