Yellow Journalism as a Warmonger in the Spanish-American War

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject History - America, grade: 1,0, course: American War Experience, language: English, abstract: This work examines in how far yellow journalism served as a warmonger in the Spanish-American War. It starts with an overview of yellow journalism and focuses on its origin, the rivalry between the two most influential editors of that era, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. After that, the author describes the benefits of American military intervention in the conflict between Cuba and Spain. Then, events like the explosion of the USS Maine and how they were presented to the American population in the media, more specifically in the newspapers, are described. This will lead to the penultimate part, in which the outbreak of the war is studied. To conclude, the author sums up the impact of yellow journalism on the Spanish-American War in contrast to the other presented significant causes. We are now in the 21st century and confronted with a wider variety of media than ever before consisting not only of newspapers and radio, but also of television and the internet. This increases the possibilities of shaping public opinion for the purpose of either financial profit or political gain. In this context the term post-truth has emerged and was even declared. Such a term could also have been used more than a century ago in order to describe the phenomenon treated in this work: yellow journalism. However, at that time, the only source of information for people to rely on was the newspaper. Accordingly, its significance was even greater.