Was American Justification for the War with Spain influenced by Yellow Journalism?

“That Hearst has received so large a measure of credit or blame for that ‘glorious war’ is a tribute to his genius as a self-promoter, explains David Nasaw in his book The Chief,” (Nasaw, 125). The popular belief is that yellow journalists like Hearst sensationalized Spanish injustices in Cuba; other papers picked up on and reiterated exaggerations especially after the sinking of the Maine and this pressure convinced the public and McKinley to go to war (Campbell, 97). Was American justification for the war with Spain influenced by Yellow Journalism? I believe that American justification for war with Spain was influenced by Journalism in general. Both conservative titles and yellow journals influenced the war. Whether the papers were telling the stories of Spanish atrocities from an objective point of view or sensationalizing them, Americans still wanted to get involved in the Cuban Rebellion. Yellow Journalism told stories of carnage and injustice committed on the Cuban people but they didn’t create the incidents. Many factors lead to a nation wanting to go to war and the stories in newspapers are only part of it. First we should ask: what is Yellow Journalism?
From Encyclopedia Britannica online: “the use of lurid features and sensationalized news in newspaper publishing to attract readers and increase circulation (Yellow). The phrase was coined in the 1890’s to describe the tactics employed in furious competition between two New York City newspapers, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World (Mugridge, 7). Some of the main arguments against yellow journalism pressing the country into war are pointed directly at the two newspapers that are credited with making yellow journalism famous. Screaming prominent headlines and lavish color pictures of the destruction of the Battleship Maine and Spanish war crimes encouraged sales of these yellow journals, (Campbell, 97). This paper will focus on the influence of the press in the 1890’s and especially Hearst’s Journal.
Those who believe that yellow journalism influenced the war believe that the “Steady Drum Roll” of anti-Spanish stories pushed the government and the people of the US towards war (Campbell, 104). But it is hard to see that this could be the case when the Yellow Press had such little power to do it. Hearst owned but two news papers in 1898; The Journal and the San Francisco Examiner (Mugridge, 8). In a time when most conservative papers deplored the sensationalism of the yellow press why would they follow their lead against Spain (Campbell 103)? While Hearst did control a syndicate that sent news stories to other papers, there is little evidence that yellow journalisms views permeated into small town and rural America, (Mugridge, 7; Campbell, 99). Some rural people received the journal and the World with their local papers (Campbell, 117). Most local papers didn’t support war and didn’t trust the Journal or other unsavory yellow journals (118).
In a debate about the effectiveness of journalism on people, two sides immerged. The “limited effects school” who believed “that readers had become to sophisticated – and their lives too hurried - for them to be much influenced by newspaper content,” (100). The other camp was the “powerful effects school” who believed that the press had a very big impact on people’s conclusions and therefore campaigned against Yellow Journalism. How could the American Public and the Government really be at the mercy of the Yellow Press when many believed that you couldn’t trust the yellow press and others believed what they said had no effect on them? While New York and other major cities had yellow journals in influence them the rural areas had even less contact with sensational journalism.
“Hearst played on American prejudices; he did not create them. Although he and other sensationalists supplied many false stories, they did not fabricate the major events that moved the United States (Nasaw, 132). An important question to ask is what was really going on in Cuba. The brutal Cuban rebellion was being met with Spanish savagery. Spanish General Weyler was popularly known as the “Butcher” in American Press (Campbell, 107). The Spanish’s first reconcentración put “as many as 400,000 Cuban noncombatants,” in walled cities with rotten food and no sanitation (106). Thousands of people died as many as 50,000 in province of Havana alone, (Hernandez). Even the conservative press couldn’t ignore the horrors of the Spanish.
The yellow journals weren’t the only press that were reporting Spanish abuses, and in a sensational manner (Campbell, 98). The Spanish imposed rigid censorship on the American press for what they were reporting in news papers back home and this made it very hard to get the truth out of Cuba (107, 98). Conflicting reports were being received by all the papers forcing even conservative journals to give erroneous information. Therefore all the papers had to speculate and print inaccurate reports (112; 113).
The conservative press would like to blame the “unnecessary war” on Yellow Journalism, (Campbell, 97). Hearst would like to claim credit for the war with headlines like “How Do You like the Journals war,” (Mugridge, 17). We saw that Yellow Journalism’s influence couldn’t reach very far, and that all of the papers in America were forced to report the truth of Spanish brutality. This shows us that Yellow Journalism influenced American opinion but not anymore then conservative titles.
Work Cited
Campbell, W. Joseph. Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies. Westport: Praeger, 2001.
Hernandez, José M. Cuba in 1898. Library of Congress. 21 Feb. 2002
Mugridge, Ian. The View from Xanadu: William Randolph Hearst and United States Foreign Policy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s, 1995.
Nasaw, David. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
“Yellow Journalism.” Encyclopedia Britannica Online (2005):