Media and the Spanish American War

When I read about the War between Spain and America over Cuba, the extent to which media played a role in shaping public opinion struck me as incredible. Way before the internet and television, media was already shaping politics in enormous ways.  At that time, newspapers played an influential role (the job digital and social media do today) in coloring people’s perspective and manipulated the masses or the government into a desired outcome that often served the interest of the few.  An example of this is how news paper moguls William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, who we learned about last unit, competed to increase their paper circulation by coming up with outrageous and sensational headlines that were not always based on facts.  

Some of the news stories about the atrocities committed against the Cuban people by the Spaniards were in fact made up entirely by Hearst.  An account tells that once, when an artist was sent by Hearst to sketch pictures of the conflict, he reported back saying there wasn’t much going on to warrant a war.  Hearst allegedly replied, “you furnish the picture and I will furnish the war”.  Another example was the publication by Hearst of a stolen letter (the de Lôme letter) that had been written by the Spanish minister at Washington, in which that diplomat expressed contempt for McKinley.  This was followed by the sinking of the U.S. battleship, Maine, in Havana harbor on Feb. 15 1898, with a loss of 260 men. Although Spanish complicity was not proved, U.S. public opinion was aroused and war sentiment rose.  

Before the war started President Cleveland had been in favor of a diplomatic means of solving conflicts. This was a result of his time serving in the Civil War and seeing too many deaths.  However, he eventually acquiesced to the pressure of the people whose views and opinions had been shaped by the newspapers, showing how much influence they truly had.

In recent history, we witnessed how similarly to the past, our government used the media effectively to garnish more first hand public support in the drum up to the Iraq war. Falsified intelligence reported about aluminum tubes and the risk of a nuclear attack by Iraq.  This news was frequently mentioned by various media outlets, the outcome being that there was more public support for the war.  For this reason, it is important for humans to scrutinize the media, and be able to tell the difference between real news and propaganda campaigns.

Sources: Spanish-American War: Causes of the War | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/spanish-american-war-causes-war.html#ixzz2kVDnTJAL

The American Pageant Textbook