Still sorting out press's role in Spanish-American War

Rick Henry

02.16.98

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ARLINGTON, Va. -- A hundred years after the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor and the subsequent Spanish-American War, questions about the cause of the war -- including the press's role -- are still unresolved, says American University professor W. Joseph Campbell.

Though newspapers at the time claimed the Maine was sunk by a Spanish torpedo, evidence exists that an internal explosion was responsible.

"Historians aren't clear (on what was responsible) and it will probably never be completely resolved," Campbell told an "Inside Media" audience in the Newseum broadcast studio on Sunday, Feb. 15. "It remains one of the most interesting and unresolved questions in military history."

Also unresolved, said Campbell, is the role newspapers -- particularly William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New York World -- played in starting the war.

"Some historians, including Hearst's most recent biographer, believe that the press was responsible for starting the war," Campbell said. "Others say the press didn't cause the insurrection and may have mirrored rather than led events. I tend to think the power of the media is overstated in this case."

Certainly the media played a part. Hearst and Pulitzer were locked in a vicious circulation war and Hearst told an illustrator stationed in Havana in 1897, "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war."

The battle for circulation gave rise to the style of journalism known as "yellow journalism." But Campbell said yellow "journalism," like the Spanish-American War, is misunderstood.

"'Yellow journalism' has become a sneer word around the world as a synonym for sensationalism, but on closer inspection, 'yellow journalism' is much more than that," he said.

Campbell said such common newspaper characteristics as large headlines, increased use of photos and illustrations, the Sunday comics, and even the large Sunday paper are direct descendants of "yellow journalism."

"It was also the basis of investigative journalism," said Campbell, now in his first year of teaching journalism at American University after completing The Freedom Forum's Ph.D. Program for Journalists. "We can find many of the roots of journalism in the 20th century in the 'yellow journalism' period of 100 years ago."