Editing Yellow journalism (section)

== Spanish–American War ==
[[Image:Spaniards search women 1898.jpg|thumb|Male Spanish officials strip search an American woman [[tourist]] in [[Cuba]] looking for messages from rebels; front page "yellow journalism" from Hearst (Artist: [[Frederic Remington]])]]
[[Image:World98.jpg|thumb|[[Joseph Pulitzer|Pulitzer]]'s treatment in the ''World'' emphasizes a horrible explosion]]
[[Image:Journal98.gif|thumb|[[William Randolph Hearst|Hearst's]] treatment was more effective and focused on the enemy who set the bomb—and offered a huge reward to readers.]]

{{Main|Propaganda of the Spanish–American War}}
Pulitzer and Hearst in the 1920s and 1930s were blamed as a cause of entry into the [[Spanish–American War]] due to sensationalist stories or exaggerations of the terrible conditions in Cuba.<ref name=vaughn/>{{rp|608}} However, the majority of Americans did not live in New York City, and the decision-makers who did live there relied more on staid newspapers like [[The New York Times|the ''Times'']], ''[[The Sun (New York City)|The Sun]]'', or [[New York Post|the ''Post'']].{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}} [[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.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=2429|date=December 2001|title=You Furnish the Legend, I'll Furnish the Quote|author=W. Joseph Campbell|journal=American Journalism Review|access-date=January 13, 2013|archive-date=June 3, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603121258/http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=2429|volume=23|issue=10|page=16|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name=Campbell/>{{rp|72}}  Historian Emily Erickson states:

{{blockquote|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.<ref name=vaughn>{{cite book |last1=Erickson|first1=Emily |editor1-last=Vaughn |editor1-first=Stephen |title=Encyclopedia of American Journalism |date=2011 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-78034-253-5 |oclc=759036346 |language=English |chapter=Spanish-American War and the Press}}</ref>}}

Hearst became a [[war hawk]] after [[Cuban War of Independence|a rebellion]] broke out in Cuba in 1895. Stories of Cuban virtue and Spanish brutality soon dominated his front page.  While the accounts were of dubious accuracy, the newspaper readers of the 19th century did not expect, or necessarily want, his stories to be pure nonfiction. Historian Michael Robertson has said that "Newspaper reporters and readers of the 1890s were much less concerned with distinguishing among fact-based reporting, opinion and literature."<ref name=Nasaw_p79quote>{{harvnb|Nasaw|2000|loc=quoted on p. 79}}</ref>

Pulitzer, though lacking Hearst's resources, kept the story on his front page. The yellow press covered the revolution extensively and often inaccurately, but conditions on Cuba were horrific enough. The island was in a terrible economic depression, and Spanish general [[Valeriano Weyler]], sent to crush the rebellion, herded Cuban peasants into [[concentration camps]], leading hundreds of Cubans to their deaths. Having clamored for a fight for two years, Hearst took credit for the conflict when it came: A week after the United States declared war on Spain, he ran "How do you like the ''Journal's'' war?" on his front page.<ref name=Nasaw_p132>{{harvnb|Nasaw|2000|p=132}}</ref> In fact, President [[William McKinley]] never read the ''Journal'', nor newspapers like the ''Tribune'' and the ''[[New York Evening Post]]''. Moreover, journalism historians have noted that yellow journalism was largely confined to New York City, and that newspapers in the rest of the country did not follow their lead. The ''Journal'' and the ''World'' were pitched to Democrats in New York City and were not among the top ten sources of news in regional papers; they seldom made headlines outside New York City.   Piero Gleijeses looked at 41 major newspapers and finds:
:Eight of the papers in my sample advocated war or measures that would lead to war before the Maine blew up; twelve joined the pro-war ranks in the wake of the explosion; thirteen strongly opposed the war until hostilities began. The borders between the groups are fluid. For example, the ''Wall Street Journal'' and ''Dun's Review'' opposed the war, but  their opposition was muted. The ''New York Herald'', the ''New York Commercial Advertiser'' and the ''Chicago Times-Herald'' came out in favour of war in March, but with such extreme reluctance that it is misleading to include them in the pro-war ranks.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Gleijeses |first1=Piero |title=1898: The Opposition to the Spanish-American War |journal=Journal of Latin American Studies |date=November 2003 |volume=35 |issue=4 |page=685 |doi=10.1017/s0022216x03006953|s2cid=145094314 }}</ref>
War came because public opinion was sickened by the bloodshed, and because leaders like McKinley realized that Spain had lost control of Cuba.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kane |first1=Thomas M |title=Theoretical Roots of US Foreign Policy: Machiavelli and American Unilateralism |date=2009 |isbn=978-0-415-54503-7 |page=64 |publisher=Routledge |oclc=1031900158 |language=English}}</ref> These factors weighed more on the president's mind than the melodramas in the ''New York Journal.''<ref name=Nasaw_p133>{{harvnb|Nasaw|2000|p=133}}</ref>  Nick Kapur says that McKinley's actions were based more on his values of arbitrationism, pacifism, humanitarianism, and manly self-restraint, than on external pressures.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kapur |first1=Nick |title=William McKinley's Values and the Origins of the Spanish-American War: A Reinterpretation |journal=Presidential Studies Quarterly |date=March 2011 |volume=41 |issue=1 |pages=18–38|jstor=23884754 |doi=10.1111/j.1741-5705.2010.03829.x}}</ref>

When the invasion began, Hearst sailed directly to Cuba as a war correspondent, providing sober and accurate accounts of the fighting.<ref name=Nasaw_p138>{{harvnb|Nasaw|2000|p=138}}</ref> Creelman later praised the work of the reporters for exposing the horrors of Spanish misrule, arguing, "no true history of the war ... can be written without an acknowledgment that whatever of justice and freedom and progress was accomplished by the Spanish–American War was due to the enterprise and tenacity of ''yellow journalists,'' many of whom lie in unremembered graves."<ref name=Smythe_p191>{{harvnb|Smythe|2003|p=191}}</ref>

===After the war===
Hearst was a leading Democrat who promoted [[William Jennings Bryan]] for president in 1896 and 1900. He later ran for mayor and governor and even sought the presidential nomination, but lost much of his personal prestige when outrage exploded in 1901 after columnist [[Ambrose Bierce]] and editor [[Arthur Brisbane]] published separate columns months apart that suggested the [[assassination of William McKinley]]. When McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901, critics accused Hearst's Yellow Journalism of driving [[Leon Czolgosz]] to the deed.  It was later presumed that Hearst did not know of Bierce's column, and he claimed to have pulled Brisbane's after it ran in a first edition, but the incident would haunt him for the rest of his life, and all but destroyed his presidential ambitions.<ref name=Nasaw_p156-158>{{harvnb|Nasaw|2000|pp=156–58}}</ref>

When later asked about Hearst's reaction to the incident, Bierce reportedly said, "I have never mentioned the matter to him, and he never mentioned it to me."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bonnet |first1=Theodore |date=March 1916 |title=William R. Hearst: A Critical Study. |journal=Lantern |volume=1 |issue=12 |pages=365–80}}</ref>

Pulitzer, haunted by his "yellow sins,"<ref name=Emory_p295>{{harvnb|Emory|Emory|1984|p=295}}</ref> returned the ''World'' to its crusading roots as the new century dawned. By the time of his death in 1911, the ''World'' was a widely respected publication, and would remain a leading progressive paper until its demise in 1931. Its name lived on in the [[Scripps-Howard]] ''[[New York World-Telegram]]'', and then later the ''New York World-Telegram and Sun'' in 1950, and finally was last used by the ''[[New York World-Journal-Tribune]]'' from September 1966 to May 1967. At that point, only one broadsheet newspaper was left in New York City.