Presidents and the Media: William McKinley and William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was both a journalist and a politician. He built the nation's largest newspaper chain, famous for what was termed "yellow journalism", articles that sought to influence the nation by emphasizing sensationalism and human interest stories in an effort to inflame passions. Hearst began his career in the publishing business in 1887 after being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father. Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal. There he fought a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, a paper that sold its editions by printing giant headlines over lurid stories featuring crime, corruption, graphics, sex, and innuendo. Hearst created a newspaper chain of almost 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world.
Hearst was twice elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives. He ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909 and for Governor of New York in 1906. Politically he espoused the Progressive Movement, purporting to speak on behalf of the working class. Unlike famous progressive Theodore Roosevelt, Hearst did so as a Democrat, not a Republican. He exercised control over the editorial positions and coverage of political news in all his papers and magazines and by doing so, he exercised enormous political influence and sway.
In 1898 Hearst famously called for war in 1898 against Spain. Many other newspaper editors did so as well, but Hearst did it in sensational fashion. In 1897 tensions were rising in Cuba as a number of persons on the island were calling for independence from Spain. The Spanish Government regarded Cuba as a province of Spain rather than a colony, and relied on it for trade, and well as for a training ground for its army. Spanish Prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo announced: "the Spanish nation is disposed to sacrifice to the last peseta of its treasure and to the last drop of blood of the last Spaniard before consenting that anyone snatch from it even one piece of its territory." The Spanish Prime Minister had dominated and stabilized Spanish politics for a considerable time. When he was assassinated in 1897 by Italian anarchist Michele Angiolillo, the Spanish political system was left in an unstable position.
Prior to his death, Cánovas del Castillo had ordered General Arsenio Martínez-Campos, a distinguished veteran from the previous uprising in Cuba, to quell a further revolt in Cuba. The general's method of containing the revolt to the province of Oriente earned him criticism in the Spanish press. He was replaced by General Valeriano Weyler, a soldier who had experience in quelling other rebellions. Weyler ordered the residents of some Cuban districts to move to reconcentration areas near the military headquarters. This strategy was effective in slowing the spread of rebellion, but led to accusations in the United States and other places of atrocities against the rebels by the army, fueling the fire of anti-Spanish propaganda. President William McKinley was publicly critical of Spanish actions against armed rebels. He even said this "was not civilized warfare" but "extermination".
Weyler's measures, and the public outcry these events provoked led to a campaign by newspaper industry in New York City, where Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and Hearst of the New York Journal recognized the potential to increase sales of newspapers with the issue. Both papers denounced Spain. They pointed out that the U.S. had important economic interests that were being harmed by the prolonged conflict. Shipping firms that had relied heavily on trade with Cuba now suffered losses as the conflict continued unresolved. These firms joined in putting pressure on Congress and McKinley to intervene to end to the revolt. Other American business concerns, specifically those who had invested in Cuban sugar, also looked to their president to to restore order in Cuba.
McKinley tried to work out the issues diplomatically. But as tension increased among the Cubans and Spanish Government, public support for intervention began to increase in the United States. A movement known as "Cuba Libre" (Free Cuba) began and many Americans saw parallels between the American Revolution and the Cuban revolt. The saw Spain as a tyrannical colonial oppressor, much like Great Britain in the Revolutionary War.
McKinley was well aware of the political pressures surrounding the conflict, but he wanted to end the revolt peacefully. He tried to negotiate with the Spanish government, hoping that an early diplomatic resolution would end the yellow journalism that was taking place in the United States. In 1897 McKinley appointed Stewart L. Woodford as the new minister to Spain. He conveyed McKinley's offer to negotiate a peace. In October 1897, the Spanish government refused the United States offer to negotiate between the Spanish and the Cubans, but did promise to give the Cubans more autonomy. The election of a more liberal Spanish government in November promised some hope, but peace was contingent on the Cuban Rebels agreeing to a cessation of hostilities. The rebels refused, hoping that continued conflict would lead to U.S. intervention and the creation of an independent Cuba.
The new Spanish government recalled the Spanish Governor General Weyler from Cuba. This upset those Cubans who were loyal to Spain. When the Cubans loyal to Weyler began planning large demonstrations for when the next Governor General, Ramon Blanco, arrived in Cuba, U.S. consul Fitzhugh Lee sent a request to the U.S. State Department to send a U.S. warship to Cuba. This led to the U.S.S. Maine being sent to Cuba.
While the Maine was docked in Havana, an explosion sank the ship. The sinking of the Maine was blamed on the Spanish. At 9:40 p.m. on February 15, 1898, the Maine sank in Havana Harbor after suffering a massive explosion. 250 members of the crew of 355 were killed. McKinley urged patience until the cause of the explosion was determined. He asked Congress to appropriate $50 million for defense out of caution, and Congress unanimously agreed to do so. Most responsible leaders took the position that the cause of the explosion was unknown, but public anger against Spain was fueled by Hearst's newspapers and others. Spain appealed to the European powers for support in the conflict, and while Germany urged a united European stand against the United States, none of the European nations took any action.
The U.S. Navy's investigation, made public on March 28, concluded that the ship's powder magazines were ignited when an external explosion was set off under the ship's hull. This report led to speculation that the ship had hit a mine or some other explosive device of Spanish making, and increased popular indignation in the U.S. Spain's investigation came to the opposite conclusion: the explosion originated within the ship. (Many years later, in 1974, US Admiral Hyman Rickover had his staff review the documents pertaining to the explosion and he supported the theory there was an internal explosion. A study commissioned by National Geographic magazine in 1999, using AME computer modelling, stated that the explosion could have been caused by a mine, but no definitive evidence was found.)
After the Maine was destroyed, Hearst and Pulitzer decided that Spain was to blame for the sinking of the Maine, and they publicized this theory as fact in their papers. They both published sensationalized accounts of atrocities committed by the Spanish in Cuba. Their papers contained headlines such as "Spanish Murderers" and "Remember The Maine". Their reports exaggerated how the Spanish were treating the Cuban prisoners, embellished with incendiary language causing emotional and angry responses from their readers.
Meanwhile, those Wall Street and in big business were opposed to war. After years of economic depression, the outlook for the domestic economy was now looking much better in 1897. The uncertainties of war a posed serious threat to full economic recovery. McKinley paid close attention to the strong anti-war consensus of the business community, and found himself in a difficult position. Hearst's Journal had a daily circulation that rose to over one million after the sinking of the Maine. The paper's immense influence (along with that of many other newspapers) provoked American outrage against Spain. Coverage of the issue was very one-sided. It couched its opposition to Spain in notions of democratic ideals and humanitarianism. There is an apocryphal story that famed illustrator Frederic Remington, who had been sent by Hearst to Cuba to cover the Cuban War, sent a telegram to Hearst to tell him there was nothing to report from Cuba. Hearst is said to have responded, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." (No credible source has been found for this story).
Hearst and the rest of the "yellow press" inflamed public opinion in New York City. Other papers, such as the Times and Sun, were more restrained and more objective in their coverage of Cuba. The Journal and the World (Pulitzer's paper) were oriented to a very large working class audience in New York City. Public outrage was a major influence in the decision by Congress to declare war on Spain. Congressional leaders, along with McKinley, realized that Spain had lost control of Cuba. McKinley cited this as the reason for ultimately going to war, and not the melodrama in the New York Journal.
Hearst sailed to Cuba with a small army of Journal reporters to cover the Spanish–American War in person. He took along portable printing equipment, used to print a single edition newspaper in Cuba after the fighting had ended. Two of the Journal's correspondents, James Creelman and Edward Marshall, were wounded in the fighting. A leader of the Cuban rebels, Gen. Calixto García, gave Hearst a Cuban flag that had been riddled with bullets as a gift, in appreciation of Hearst's major role in Cuba's liberation.
After the war ended, Hearst won two elections to Congress, before losing an election for mayor of New York City in both 1905 and 1909 and for governor of New York in 1906. He nominally remained a Democrat, but also created the Independence Party. Hearst was on the left wing of the Progressive Movement. Ironically, though tremendously wealthy, he purported to speak on behalf of the working class (who bought his papers) and denounced the rich and powerful. He also ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 1904, losing to a conservative New York judge, Alton B. Parker.
Hearst opposed American involvement in the First World War and attacked the formation of the League of Nations. His newspapers abstained from endorsing any candidate in 1920 and 1924. Hearst's last bid for office came in 1922 when he tried to get the U.S. Senate nomination in New York. Al Smith vetoed this, earning the lasting enmity of Hearst. He supported Herbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election, but supported Franklin D. Roosevelt at the 1932 Democratic National Convention. In both cases his dislike for Al Smith seemed to the the major motivating factor. In the mid 1930s his political views changed once again as he became a leader of the anti-Roosevelt conservatives. In 1934, Hearst visited Berlin to interview Adolf Hitler. Hearst's papers ran columns without rebuttal by Nazi leader Hermann Göring and Hitler himself, as well as Mussolini and other dictators in Europe and Latin America.
Hearst died in Beverly Hills on August 14, 1951, at the age of 88. He was interred in the Hearst family mausoleum at the Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma, California. His life story was the main inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, the lead character in Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane. His famous mansion, Hearst Castle, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean near San Simeon, is now a State Historical Monument and a National Historic Landmark.
Hearst was twice elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives. He ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909 and for Governor of New York in 1906. Politically he espoused the Progressive Movement, purporting to speak on behalf of the working class. Unlike famous progressive Theodore Roosevelt, Hearst did so as a Democrat, not a Republican. He exercised control over the editorial positions and coverage of political news in all his papers and magazines and by doing so, he exercised enormous political influence and sway.
In 1898 Hearst famously called for war in 1898 against Spain. Many other newspaper editors did so as well, but Hearst did it in sensational fashion. In 1897 tensions were rising in Cuba as a number of persons on the island were calling for independence from Spain. The Spanish Government regarded Cuba as a province of Spain rather than a colony, and relied on it for trade, and well as for a training ground for its army. Spanish Prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo announced: "the Spanish nation is disposed to sacrifice to the last peseta of its treasure and to the last drop of blood of the last Spaniard before consenting that anyone snatch from it even one piece of its territory." The Spanish Prime Minister had dominated and stabilized Spanish politics for a considerable time. When he was assassinated in 1897 by Italian anarchist Michele Angiolillo, the Spanish political system was left in an unstable position.
Prior to his death, Cánovas del Castillo had ordered General Arsenio Martínez-Campos, a distinguished veteran from the previous uprising in Cuba, to quell a further revolt in Cuba. The general's method of containing the revolt to the province of Oriente earned him criticism in the Spanish press. He was replaced by General Valeriano Weyler, a soldier who had experience in quelling other rebellions. Weyler ordered the residents of some Cuban districts to move to reconcentration areas near the military headquarters. This strategy was effective in slowing the spread of rebellion, but led to accusations in the United States and other places of atrocities against the rebels by the army, fueling the fire of anti-Spanish propaganda. President William McKinley was publicly critical of Spanish actions against armed rebels. He even said this "was not civilized warfare" but "extermination".
Weyler's measures, and the public outcry these events provoked led to a campaign by newspaper industry in New York City, where Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and Hearst of the New York Journal recognized the potential to increase sales of newspapers with the issue. Both papers denounced Spain. They pointed out that the U.S. had important economic interests that were being harmed by the prolonged conflict. Shipping firms that had relied heavily on trade with Cuba now suffered losses as the conflict continued unresolved. These firms joined in putting pressure on Congress and McKinley to intervene to end to the revolt. Other American business concerns, specifically those who had invested in Cuban sugar, also looked to their president to to restore order in Cuba.
McKinley tried to work out the issues diplomatically. But as tension increased among the Cubans and Spanish Government, public support for intervention began to increase in the United States. A movement known as "Cuba Libre" (Free Cuba) began and many Americans saw parallels between the American Revolution and the Cuban revolt. The saw Spain as a tyrannical colonial oppressor, much like Great Britain in the Revolutionary War.
McKinley was well aware of the political pressures surrounding the conflict, but he wanted to end the revolt peacefully. He tried to negotiate with the Spanish government, hoping that an early diplomatic resolution would end the yellow journalism that was taking place in the United States. In 1897 McKinley appointed Stewart L. Woodford as the new minister to Spain. He conveyed McKinley's offer to negotiate a peace. In October 1897, the Spanish government refused the United States offer to negotiate between the Spanish and the Cubans, but did promise to give the Cubans more autonomy. The election of a more liberal Spanish government in November promised some hope, but peace was contingent on the Cuban Rebels agreeing to a cessation of hostilities. The rebels refused, hoping that continued conflict would lead to U.S. intervention and the creation of an independent Cuba.
The new Spanish government recalled the Spanish Governor General Weyler from Cuba. This upset those Cubans who were loyal to Spain. When the Cubans loyal to Weyler began planning large demonstrations for when the next Governor General, Ramon Blanco, arrived in Cuba, U.S. consul Fitzhugh Lee sent a request to the U.S. State Department to send a U.S. warship to Cuba. This led to the U.S.S. Maine being sent to Cuba.
While the Maine was docked in Havana, an explosion sank the ship. The sinking of the Maine was blamed on the Spanish. At 9:40 p.m. on February 15, 1898, the Maine sank in Havana Harbor after suffering a massive explosion. 250 members of the crew of 355 were killed. McKinley urged patience until the cause of the explosion was determined. He asked Congress to appropriate $50 million for defense out of caution, and Congress unanimously agreed to do so. Most responsible leaders took the position that the cause of the explosion was unknown, but public anger against Spain was fueled by Hearst's newspapers and others. Spain appealed to the European powers for support in the conflict, and while Germany urged a united European stand against the United States, none of the European nations took any action.
The U.S. Navy's investigation, made public on March 28, concluded that the ship's powder magazines were ignited when an external explosion was set off under the ship's hull. This report led to speculation that the ship had hit a mine or some other explosive device of Spanish making, and increased popular indignation in the U.S. Spain's investigation came to the opposite conclusion: the explosion originated within the ship. (Many years later, in 1974, US Admiral Hyman Rickover had his staff review the documents pertaining to the explosion and he supported the theory there was an internal explosion. A study commissioned by National Geographic magazine in 1999, using AME computer modelling, stated that the explosion could have been caused by a mine, but no definitive evidence was found.)
After the Maine was destroyed, Hearst and Pulitzer decided that Spain was to blame for the sinking of the Maine, and they publicized this theory as fact in their papers. They both published sensationalized accounts of atrocities committed by the Spanish in Cuba. Their papers contained headlines such as "Spanish Murderers" and "Remember The Maine". Their reports exaggerated how the Spanish were treating the Cuban prisoners, embellished with incendiary language causing emotional and angry responses from their readers.
Meanwhile, those Wall Street and in big business were opposed to war. After years of economic depression, the outlook for the domestic economy was now looking much better in 1897. The uncertainties of war a posed serious threat to full economic recovery. McKinley paid close attention to the strong anti-war consensus of the business community, and found himself in a difficult position. Hearst's Journal had a daily circulation that rose to over one million after the sinking of the Maine. The paper's immense influence (along with that of many other newspapers) provoked American outrage against Spain. Coverage of the issue was very one-sided. It couched its opposition to Spain in notions of democratic ideals and humanitarianism. There is an apocryphal story that famed illustrator Frederic Remington, who had been sent by Hearst to Cuba to cover the Cuban War, sent a telegram to Hearst to tell him there was nothing to report from Cuba. Hearst is said to have responded, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." (No credible source has been found for this story).
Hearst and the rest of the "yellow press" inflamed public opinion in New York City. Other papers, such as the Times and Sun, were more restrained and more objective in their coverage of Cuba. The Journal and the World (Pulitzer's paper) were oriented to a very large working class audience in New York City. Public outrage was a major influence in the decision by Congress to declare war on Spain. Congressional leaders, along with McKinley, realized that Spain had lost control of Cuba. McKinley cited this as the reason for ultimately going to war, and not the melodrama in the New York Journal.
Hearst sailed to Cuba with a small army of Journal reporters to cover the Spanish–American War in person. He took along portable printing equipment, used to print a single edition newspaper in Cuba after the fighting had ended. Two of the Journal's correspondents, James Creelman and Edward Marshall, were wounded in the fighting. A leader of the Cuban rebels, Gen. Calixto García, gave Hearst a Cuban flag that had been riddled with bullets as a gift, in appreciation of Hearst's major role in Cuba's liberation.
After the war ended, Hearst won two elections to Congress, before losing an election for mayor of New York City in both 1905 and 1909 and for governor of New York in 1906. He nominally remained a Democrat, but also created the Independence Party. Hearst was on the left wing of the Progressive Movement. Ironically, though tremendously wealthy, he purported to speak on behalf of the working class (who bought his papers) and denounced the rich and powerful. He also ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 1904, losing to a conservative New York judge, Alton B. Parker.
Hearst opposed American involvement in the First World War and attacked the formation of the League of Nations. His newspapers abstained from endorsing any candidate in 1920 and 1924. Hearst's last bid for office came in 1922 when he tried to get the U.S. Senate nomination in New York. Al Smith vetoed this, earning the lasting enmity of Hearst. He supported Herbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election, but supported Franklin D. Roosevelt at the 1932 Democratic National Convention. In both cases his dislike for Al Smith seemed to the the major motivating factor. In the mid 1930s his political views changed once again as he became a leader of the anti-Roosevelt conservatives. In 1934, Hearst visited Berlin to interview Adolf Hitler. Hearst's papers ran columns without rebuttal by Nazi leader Hermann Göring and Hitler himself, as well as Mussolini and other dictators in Europe and Latin America.
Hearst died in Beverly Hills on August 14, 1951, at the age of 88. He was interred in the Hearst family mausoleum at the Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma, California. His life story was the main inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, the lead character in Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane. His famous mansion, Hearst Castle, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean near San Simeon, is now a State Historical Monument and a National Historic Landmark.