Hearst and the Spanish American War

William Randolph Hearst historically has
been widely charged with Fanning the
flames of the spanish-american war due
to a desire to sell newspapers hi I’m
Rebecca Brayton and welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’ll be
considering why this may be a
misconception generally it’s believed
that Hearst won in America to fight
Spain over Cuba because he wanted to
sell newspapers he just had no higher
purpose than running up the circulation
making more money that’s that’s the
story as its told what was going on at
the time Spain was in possession of Cuba
and Spain had money problems so it was
squeezings colony in Cuba for all it was
worth and trying to get more money out
of sugarcane everything else that was
going on there Cuban people rebelled
against Spain they didn’t want to be
squeezed Hearst looked at this and said
you know America was born in a
revolution against the British Empire
when the British Empire starts squeezing
the colonies in the u.s. we sympathize
philosophically politically with the
Cuban people so he was supporting them
from the start
Spain starts losing its fight to put
down the rebellion in Cuba and starts
resorting to harsher and harsher
measures to try and put it down
including rounding up all of the
civilians in the countryside and putting
him in effectively into concentration
camps four hundred thousand people on an
island at one point six million and they
begin dying by the tens of thousands and
eventually the hundreds of thousands of
disease and starvation this really
outraged Hearst and he wanted America to
step in and do something Hearst just
kept beating the drum beating the drum
on behalf of the Cuban people in
eventually Washington did step in
diplomatically and when Spain wouldn’t
move they stepped in militarily and
cleared Spain out of Cuba I think is one
of the most heroic things that a
newspapers ever done was to to encourage
the government to step in on behalf of
the poor Cuban people who were just
devastated by the effects of this
rebellion and Spain’s efforts to put it
down and what about that infamous quote
I know most people have heard yes well
Hearst during the spanish-american war
sends Frederick Remington the
illustrator to Cuba to do some work
Remington writes to Hearst at some point
purportedly why
I’m saying there’s nothing going on here
I wanted to come home and Hearst is
alleged to have said you furnished the
pictures and I’ll furnish the war
nobody’s ever found this telegram we’re
not sure it ever existed and if it did
exist it probably didn’t mean what
people have taken it to mean that Hearst
thought he could just whip up a war in
six weeks Hearst was a lot ruder than
that in that particular time he’s
alleged to have sent it they were a long
ways Washington from intervening a lots
been made out of it because people have
this sort of outsized picture of a
Hearst is this big cynical monster with
amazing influence and power who could do
something so outrageous is just start a
war in order to that his illustrators
time schedule but it’s part of the
legend of Hearst and part of why we’re
fascinated by him but it didn’t really
happen