The Lucrezia Borgia of Journalism (1910) — William Randolph Hearst, wearing a bright yellow dress, as Lucrezia Borgia painting poison from pots labeled 'Slander', 'Riot', 'Scandal', 'Malice', and 'Spite' on various newspapers scattered on the floor, where also sits a further tub labelled 'Attacks on Decent Officials'. The note to the bottom right explains: 'To poison the pages of a book, so that the mere handling of it might be fatal, was said to be a favorite method of the Borgias'

Featured on PDR in the collection Yellow Journalism: The “Fake News” of the 19th Century

It is perhaps not so surprising to hear that the problem of "fake news" — media outlets adopting sensationalism to the point of fantasy — is nothing new. Although, as Robert Darnton explained in the NYRB recently, the peddling of public lies for political gain (or simply financial profit) can be found in most periods of history dating back to antiquity, it is in the late 19th-century phenomenon of "Yellow Journalism" that it first seems to reach the widespread outcry and fever pitch of scandal familiar today. Why yellow? The reasons are not totally clear. Some sources point to the yellow ink the publications would sometimes use, though it more likely stems from the popular Yellow Kid cartoon that first ran in Joseph Pulitzer's New…