“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” – William Randolph Hearst, January 25, 1898
112 years ago today, an powerful theme of 20th century American history–the influence of mass media–found expression a few years before the new century would begin.
The story centers on William Randolph Hearst, the son of a U.S. senator from California who had made a fortune in the mid-1800s mining industry. Hearst developed a passion for journalism and wrote for the Harvard Lampoon while a college student before working as an apprentice for New York World editor Joseph Pulitzer.
Hearst returned to California in 1887 at the age of 24 and , with the aid of his father’s wealth, became the owner and operator of the San Francisco Examiner, imitating the flashy, sensationalistic style of Pulitzer. In 1895, Hearst returned east, purchasing and running the New York Journal. This put him in direct competition with his former mentor and accelerated the intensely competitive environment of newspaper publishing in New York City.
As Hearst sought to gain readership for his New York Journal against Pulitzer’s New York World, he pursued increasingly sensational stories. Front pages shouted about the boy who bit into a stick of dynamite thinking it was candy and leading to an “awful death” and a tale of a deranged girl running down a street with her hair “all ablaze”, and other stories of violence, sex, catastrophe, and mayhem were typical of what became known as “yellow journalism”, so named because the newly-introduced colored comics sections often spread a yellow smeared to other parts of these newspapers.
But Hearst found that these sensational stories–as successful as they were in attracting readers–lacked the benefit of carrying on from day to day and week to week. In search of such a story, Hearst grasped onto the Cuban revolt against Spain in 1895. His paper regularly published stories sympathetic to the still sparse revolutionary cause and describing in great detail real and rumored atrocities of the Spanish. Hearst hoped to spark U.S. intervention in Cuba and was persistent in finding ways to achieve it, including organizing a daring and successful rescue mission to free a young, female Cuban political prisoner, Evangelina Cisneros, which he proudly trumpeted on the front page of the Journal.
Though the Cuban insurrection against their Spanish rulers was stagnating, Hearst continued to send many of his high-profile writers and illustrators to the Cuba in hopes of capturing a great story. Among Hearst’s employees was the famed illustrator Frederic Remington. In 1897, Remington became very bored by the lack of anything newsworthy in Cuba and cabled to Hearst, “Everything quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. Wish to return.” In response to Remington’s message, Hearst reportedly replied, “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”
Less than three weeks later, the American ship USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor. The cause of the explosion that claimed 274 lives remains a mystery. Theories for its destruction include that the ship detonated an external mine, that it was caused by an undetected internal coal fire, that it was attacked by the Spanish, and even that it was intentionally attacked by American forces eager to have the United States enter a war with Spain.
Whatever its true cause, Hearst determined that the sinking of the Maine was the result of Spanish treachery and his paper vigorously published stories that helped create and foster the American sentiment reflected in the popular phrase, “Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!” Within three months, the United States was at war with Spain in what became known as the Spanish-American War. Though it was only one of the factors–and an often overemphasized factor–that led the U.S. into war with Spain, the effect of Hearst’s newspaper on shaping American support for war was enormously significant. It also signified the growing influence of mass media, which had never before proven to be as immediate and far-reaching.
Within four months, the United States defeated Spain, becoming a truly global power while simultaneously marking an end to Spanish imperialism. Hearst would continue solidifying his status as a media mogul, eventually becoming the leading newspaper and magazine publisher in the world. He served two terms as a Democrat in the U.S. Congress, was partial inspiration for the character Kane in Orson Welles’s legendary film “Citizen Kane”, and lived for most of his later years at the extravagant, 90,000 square foot Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.
Hearst died on August 14, 1951 in Beverly Hills, California, just less than a quarter century before his grandaugher, Patty Hearst, was the focus of the the kind of sensational news story his old New York Journal would have devoured.
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Time August 9, 2018 at 10:00 pm
[…] home from Cuba because there was no sign of a worsening crisis. Hearst instructed him to stay, adding, “you furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the […]
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Time August 9, 2018 at 10:02 pm
[…] home from Cuba because there was no sign of a worsening crisis. Hearst instructed him to stay, adding, “you furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the […]
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Time August 11, 2018 at 8:55 am
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[…] della cosiddetta “stampa gialla” [stampa scandalistica], nel 1897 William Randolph Hearst rimproverò [in inglese] l’illustratore che aveva inviato a Cuba e che non aveva trovato nessuna guerra da […]
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Time June 25, 2019 at 3:47 am
[…] William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal had been agitating for military action. Lurid stories about alleged Spanish atrocities in Cuba sold newspapers. Hearst dispatched famed artist Frederic Remington to report. Remington found little to report. “Everything quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. Wish to return,” he cabled to his employer in 1897. Hearst responded, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” […]
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Time January 9, 2020 at 12:01 am
[…] “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” – WR Hearst, January 25, 1898 It is part of the Hearst legend. “Frederic Sackrider Remington, the famous artist who brought to life American images of the west, was hired by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst to illustrate the revolution erupting in Cuba. He wrote back to Hearst one day in January 1897: “Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.” Hearst sent back a note: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Chamblee54 readers should know where this is going to go. Mr. Remington was sent to Cuba, along with correspondent Richard Harding Davis, to cover the rebellion against the Spanish colonial government. At the time of this purported exchange, the conflict between Spain, and the Cuban rebels, was rather lively. This is at odds with the initial comment by Mr. Remington. One item which modern observers will find odd is the fact that Mr. Remington drew pictures. He was not a photographer. Apparently, in 1897 journalism, a hand drawing was acceptable evidence of a conflict. Not likely sent: The Remington-Hearst “telegrams” is a thorough debunking of this legend. The source of the legend is “James Creelman, On the Great Highway: The Wanderings and Adventures of a Special Correspondent. (Boston: Lothrop Publishing, 1901), 177-178.” “Creelman does not … describe how or when he learned about the supposed Remington-Hearst exchange. In any case, it had to have been second-hand because Creelman was in Europe in early 1897, as the Journal’s “special commissioner” on the Continent.” “It is improbable that such an exchange of telegrams would have been cleared by Spanish censors in Havana. So strict were the censors that dispatches from American correspondents reporting the war in Cuba often were taken by ship to Florida and transmitted from there.” … correspondence of Richard Harding Davis — the war correspondent with whom Remington traveled on the assignment to Cuba — contains no reference to Remington’s wanting to leave because “there will be no war.” Rather, Davis in his letters gave several other reasons for Remington’s departure, including the artist’s reluctance to travel through Spanish lines to reach the Cuban insurgents. … Davis’ letters show that he had little regard for the rotund, slow-moving Remington, whom he called “a large blundering bear.” The purported Remington-Hearst exchange, moreover, appears not to have been particularly important or newsworthy at the time … the anecdote seems to have provoked almost no discussion or controversy until a correspondent for the Times of London mentioned it in a dispatch from New York in 1907. He wrote: “Is the Press of the United States going insane? . . . A letter from William Randolph Hearst is in existence and was printed in a magazine not long ago. It was to an artist he had sent to Cuba, and who reported no likelihood of war. —You provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war.'” “Hearst, indignant about the report, replied in a letter to the Times. He described as “frankly false” and “ingeniously idiotic” the claim “that there was a letter in existence from Mr. W. R. Hearst in which Mr. Hearst said to a correspondent in Cuba: —You provide the pictures and I will provide the war,’ and the intimation that Mr. Hearst was chiefly responsible for the Spanish war. … “This kind of clotted nonsense could only be generally circulated and generally believed in England, where newspapers claiming to be conservative and reliable are the most utterly untrustworthy of any on earth. In apology for these newspapers it may be said that their untrustworthiness is not always to intention but more frequently to ignorance and prejudice.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. […]
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Time January 12, 2020 at 11:25 pm
[…] a lot while he’s speaking.” “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” – WR Hearst, January 25, 1898 Not likely sent: The Remington-Hearst “telegrams” 58 times. He sniffed 58 times during […]
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Time February 18, 2020 at 7:25 pm
C-Span Book TV hosted Prof. Joseph Campbell author of “Getting It Wrong” deconstructs this story
https://www.c-span.org/video/?294627-1/qa-w-joseph-campbell
it’s early in the interview, It’s Myth #1
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