William Hearst and American media history

William Randolph Hearst, Sr.

Shortly after being expelled from Harvard, William Hearst acquired his first newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, from his father. In 1895, eight years later, Hearst purchased the New York Morning Journal and entered into a fierce competition for circulation dominance with Joseph Pulitzer, who owned the New York World newspaper. In order to make their stories more sensational and therefore increase readership and circulation numbers, both newspapers greatly exaggerated and distorted their reporting. At approximately this same time, Hearst began using color in a comics series called "The Yellow Kid." The yellow dye stained the pages, and the stain as well as the stain of fabricated journalism became known as "yellow journalism."

According to PBS, Hearst understood that "a war with Spain over Cuba would not only sell newspapers, but also move him into a position of national prominence" (PBS para. 6). Both Hearst and Pulitzer continually agitated the public with false accounts, and at one time claimed that a quarter of the population of Cuba had died under the Spanish colonialism (Freidel, p. 590). According to the New York Times, "he took credit for America's declaration of war against Spain in 1898" (Kennedy, para 4). America declared war as a result of the corrupt news media.