Chapter 18 Section 2 Critical Thinking #3

3) What do you think were the unstated editorial policies of yellow journalism?
- James Creelman's account of Spanish atrocities against Cubans (p. 552)
-Hearst's remark to Remington
-The Journal headline about the explosion of the battleship Maine

I think that the unstated editorial policies of yellow journalism were to over exaggerate and fabricate stories in order to make propaganda that would spawn American sympathy for the Cubans and provoke a response from Americans.
The accounts of the terrible cruelty of General Valeriano Weyler and other Spanish atrocities were greatly fabricated, in order to get a response from the Americans. Although Weyler did do cruel things (such as imprisoning 300,000 Cubans in barbed-wire concentration camps where thousands died), the journalists wrote stories about poisoned wells and how children would be thrown to the sharks that were completely false, and designed to enrage Americans so much that they would be inspired to take action (p. 553). It was pure propaganda, and its purpose was to infuriate its readers.
William Rudolph Hearst , a newspaper tycoon in charge of the New York Journal made a remark to Frederic Remington to draw pictures to go with reporter's stories, that was very revealing about the nature of yellow journalism: When Remington told Hearst that he didn't believe that war between Spain and the U.S. was going to happen, he said "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war" (p. 533). This comment showed his desire to provoke a response from the public and implied that some of the stories may have been "furnished", or changed to make them more effective.
When the battleship U.S.S. Maine exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, the headline of the New York Journal was "The warship Maine was split in two by an enemy's secret infernal machine." Nobody knoew why the ship exploded, at the time, but newspapers, eager for war, immiediately blamed Spain, saying that they were responsible for the death of over 260 men. The Spanish are even labeled as "the enemy" in the headline. In addition to this, Hearst's paper offered a $50,000 dollar reward for the person who captured the Spaniards responsible (p. 554). The newspapers had simply lied about the events in order to start a war. All of the evidence together shows that yellow journalism's policy was that anything that gets a reaction goes into the paper. Any event could be changed completely in a way that would spark retaliation.