Did yellow journalism provoke the Spanish-American War?
American media and especially journalism was transformed during the 19th Century, and with positive transformations come negative transformations as well, with one prominent controversial addition to American media being yellow journalism. Many say that a main cause of the Spanish American War was yellow journalism which came about in the 19th Century, and became the main cause in the buildup to the Spanish-American War. Through research and analysis of the times, it can be definitively concluded that yellow journalism in media was, in fact, the leading cause in the United State’s declaration of war onto Spain.
First of all, many rebellions were occurring in the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico, which had been ruled by Spain for hundreds of years, and when other Spanish colonies rebelled for their independence in the 1820s, Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule. However, in 1895 the Cuban people revolted, but Spain’s massive authority put thousands of innocent Cubans into deadly prison camps, killing thousands and thousands of Cubans painful deaths of starvation and disease. Many American newspapers began publicizing these rebellions, with the most publicizing newspapers being the newspapers owned by Randolph Hearst as well as Joseph Pulitzer, putting these events on the newspaper every day as front page headlines. (TCI The Spanish-American War) These headlines can be seen in the New York Journal from February 17, 1898, in which there are many phrases saying these attacks were on “innocent people” and they were the work of an “enemy” as well as many keywords that may or may not be true were used, such as “unanimous” or “it was not an accident.” All of these statements were clearly past their time, and even to this day there is no definitive conclusion or answer to who destroyed the USS Maine. Through the use of all of these headlines, and the all-powerful word-of-mouth, the American...