Nieman Watchdog, a blog that “seeks to encourage more informed reporting,” indulged yesterday in the mythical tale of William Randolph Hearst‘s famous vow to “furnish the war” with Spain in the late 19th century.
Remington in Cuba for Hearst
It was a case of the blog’s turning to a fiction about Hearst and treating it as if it were fact.
The occasion for invoking “furnish the war” was to call attention to inaccuracies in news graphics accompanying reports last week about the slaying of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
“Journalism is a serious business where credibility is paramount,” the blog post asserted. “Editors need, first and foremost, to get the facts right, in graphics as well as text and video.”
The post further noted that “some publications presented as facts what was just fiction. Sometimes there was no factual support whatsoever. It’s as though William Randolph Hearst was back with us, saying once again, ‘You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.'”
As I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, the tale about Hearst’s vow to “furnish the war” is a hardy media-driven myth that lives on despite concerted attempts to discredit and dismantle it.
The vow supposedly was contained in a telegram sent to the famous artist, Frederic Remington, who was on assignment in Cuba for Hearst’s flamboyant New York Journal (see image, above). Remington and the correspondent Richard Harding Davis were assigned there to cover the insurrection against Spanish colonial rule — the conflict that gave rise in 1898 to the Spanish-American War.
They arrived in Havana in early January 1897; Remington stayed only six days.
Before leaving by passenger steamer for New York, Remington supposedly sent Hearst a cable, stating:
“Everything is quiet. There will be no war. I wish to return.”
Hearst replied with his famous vow:
“Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”
But Remington didn’t stay.
He promptly returned to New York, where his sketches were given prominent display in Hearst’s Journal. They appeared with such flattering headlines as: “Cuban War Sketches Gathered in the Field by Frederic Remington; The Gifted Artist, Visiting Cuba Especially for the Journal.”
That’s hardly the sort of tribute Hearst would have granted a wayward artist who ignored specific instructions to “remain” in Cuba.
I further note in Getting It Wrong that the anecdote about Hearst’s vow “lives on despite an irreconcilable internal inconsistency: It would have been absurd for Hearst to vow to ‘furnish the war’ because war — specifically, the Cuban rebellion against Spain’s colonial rule — was the very reason Hearst sent Remington to Cuba in the first place.”
Anyone reading U.S. newspapers in early 1897 “would have been well aware,” I write, “that Cuba was a theater of a nasty war,” which gave rise in April 1898 to the Spanish-American War.
Not only that, but the artifacts themselves — the telegrams reputedly sent by Remington and Hearst — have never surfaced. And Spanish censors monitored incoming and outgoing telegraphic traffic in Havana, and they surely would have intercepted Hearst’s incendiary message — had it been sent.
For those and other reasons, the tale about the Remington-Hearst exchange is surely apocryphal — fiction that too often masquerades as fact.
Recent and related:
- The ‘anniversary’ of a media myth: ‘I’ll furnish the war’
- Fact-checking ‘Mother Jones’: A rare two-fer
- ‘Furnish the war’ lives on, and on
- Getting it right about Hearst, his newspapers, and war
- Hearst ‘pushed us into war’? How’d he do that?
- ‘War Lovers’: A myth-indulging disappointment
- Fact-checking WaPo columnist on the ‘McKinley moment’
- Suspect Murrow quote pulled at Murrow school
- ‘Commentary’ reviews ‘Getting It Wrong’
Media Myth Alert 
[…] As if Hearst were ‘back with us,’ vowing to ‘furnish the war’ […]
[…] As if Hearst were ‘back with us,’ vowing to ‘furnish the war’ […]
[…] then, some myths are so deeply ingrained — so delicious, beloved, and readily at hand — that they’ll probably never be […]
[…] As if Hearst were ‘back with us,’ vowing to ‘furnish the war’ […]
[…] a single article. One of the myths was the hoary and surely apocryphal tale about William Randolph Hearst and his reputed vow to “furnish the war” with Spain. The other was about the so-called […]
[…] be true,” I write in discussing such media myths as William Randolph Hearst’s reputed vow — supposedly made in an exchange of telegrams with the artist Frederic Remington — to […]
[…] telling example is the undying tale about William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow in an exchange of telegrams with Frederic Remington to “furnish the war” with Spain at […]
[…] starvation. U.S. newspapers — including but certainly not limited to the dailies of Pulitzer and Hearst — were aware of, and reported extensively about, the humanitarian crisis that had taken hold on […]
[…] for doubting the Hearstian vow are many, I write, and include the fact that the telegram in which Hearst supposedly made the […]
[…] of the news media — that in extreme cases, they media can plunge the country into war, as Hearst and Pulitzer supposedly did with the sometimes-inflammatory content of their New York City […]
[…] for doubting the presumptive Hearstian vow are many, I point out in Getting It Wrong, and include the fact that the telegram in which Hearst […]
[…] paid $3,000 to the novelist, playwright, and foreign correspondent Richard Harding Davis to spend a month for the Journal in Cuba in early 1897, writing reports about the Cuban rebellion […]
[…] what may prompt pundits to turn credulously and not infrequently to the anecdote about Hearst and his supposed […]
[…] As if Hearst were ‘back with us,’ vowing to ‘furnish the war’ […]
[…] As if Hearst were ‘back with us,’ vowing to ‘furnish the war’ […]
[…] As if Hearst were ‘back with us,’ vowing to ‘furnish the war’ […]
[…] it’s virtually certain that Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” is […]
[…] Hearst, I wrote, “lives on 60 years after his death as the mythical bogeyman of American journalism, the personification of the field’s most egregious impulses,” and the inspiration for the epithet “yellow journalism.” […]
[…] As if Hearst were ‘back with us,’ vowing to ‘furnish the war’ […]
[…] reputed vow supposedly was made in an exchange of telegrams with the artist Frederic Remington, who was on […]
[…] that is the hoary tale that Hearst, in a telegraphic exchange with Remington, vowed to “furnish the war” with […]
[…] line, “you furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war,” was attributed to Hearst more than 110 years ago. But as decades passed, no compelling […]
[…] in answering Remington’s telegram, Hearst vowed to “furnish the war” with Spain, which broke out 15 months later, in April […]
[…] As if Hearst ‘were back with us,’ vowing to ‘furnish the war’ […]
[…] Hearst was a mostly unsatisfactory biography published in 1961 about media baron William Randolph Hearst. It was more caricature than revealing […]
[…] vow attributed to William Randolph Hearst that he would “furnish the war” with Spain in the late 19th century is a zombie-like bogus quote: Despite thorough and […]
[…] start with the unsourced reference to Hearst’s “furnish the war” […]
[…] the war’ (posted December 18): The vow attributed to William Randolph Hearst to “furnish the war” with Spain in the late 19th century is a zombie-like bogus quote: Despite thorough and repeated […]
[…] accused of journalistic misconduct such as fomenting the Spanish-American War in 1898, after vowing to a prominent artist that he would do just […]
[…] the mythical but enduring tale of William Randolph Hearst, a media bogeyman for all time, and his vow to “furnish the war” with Spain in the late 19th […]