W. Joseph Campbell

Posts Tagged ‘Frederic Remington’

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Hearst, Remington, and the half-embrace of a hoary media myth

In 1897, Debunking, Error, Furnish the war, Media myths, Quotes, Spanish-American War, Yellow Journalism on June 17, 2019 at 10:31 am

It’s unusual for media myths to be embraced partially — a half-embrace, as it were, of those prominent tall tales about journalists and their supposed exploits.

On assignment for Hearst

But half-embrace is how a new book treats the hoary media myth of William Randolph Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain at the end of 19th Century.

Hearst supposedly made the declaration in a telegraphic reply to the artist Frederic Remington, who was on assignment in Cuba for Hearst’s New York Journal.

The exchange of telegrams purportedly went this way:

Remington: “Everything this quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return.”

Hearst: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”

Clay Risen’s new book, The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders and the Dawn of the American Century, does a half embrace of that well-known but thoroughly dubious tale. Specifically, Risen treats Hearst’s supposed reply as improbable but embraces the Remington portion.

And he does so flatly, writing: “Remington telegraphed Hearst to tell him that there was no war, and that there wasn’t going to be one.”

Risen repeats the purported Remington message: “Everything this quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return.”

He then says Hearst “allegedly, infamously, replied, ‘Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.’

“In fact,” Risen adds, “it’s unlikely Hearst wrote anything of the kind. … Whatever his reply, Remington ignored him and left Cuba.”

As sources, Risen cites two books, Frederic Remington and the Spanish-American War and The Chief, David Nasaw’s fine biography of Hearst. Both are secondary sources published before my media-mythbusting book, Getting It Wrong, which devotes a chapter to dismantling the presumptive Remington-Hearst exchange. (I first addressed the Remington-Hearst tale in 2000, in an article for the peer-reviewed Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.)

The Remington-Hearst anecdote, I wrote in Getting It Wrong, “lives on despite a nearly complete absence of supporting documentation” — the purported telegrams have never turned up; Hearst denied such an exchange, and Remington, apparently, never discussed it. The anecdote’s sole original source was an exaggeration-prone journalist named James Creelman, who mentioned the purported exchange in a book of reminiscences in 1901. But Creelman did not explain how or when he learned about it.

For those and other reasons, the tale is almost certainly untrue. And that goes for the Remington portion, which Risen, deputy op-ed editor at the New York TImes, embraced in his book. It’s highly unlikely Remington wrote anything close to “Everything this quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war.” His work and words give lie to that supposed message.

Cuba at the time was scarcely trouble-free: It was in the midst of an island-wide rebellion against Spanish colonial rule and that armed conflict — that war — was the very reason Hearst sent Remington and Davis to the island. Remington hardly found everything “quiet” in Cuba when he arrived in early January 1897, in the company of the correspondent Richard Harding Davis.

As I discussed in Getting It Wrong, Remington sketches, as published in Hearst’s Journal, “depict unmistakable (if unremarkable) scenes of a rebellion — a scouting party of Spanish cavalry with rifles at the ready; a cluster of Cuban non-combatants trussed and bound and being herded into Spanish lines; a scruffy Cuban rebel kneeling to fire at a small Spanish fort; a knot of Spanish soldiers dressing a comrade’s leg wound.”

The subject matter impugns the notion that Remington had found “everything … quiet” in Cuba.

Remington sketch, Cuba 1897

What’s more, the headlines accompanying the sketches emphasized the conflict in Cuba. Remington’s work appeared in the Journal beneath headlines such as “Cuban War Sketches Gathered in the Field by Frederic Remington” and “Frederic Remington Sketches a Familiar Incident of the Cuban War” (see nearby).

Following his return to New York, Remington wrote a letter to the Journal’s keenest rival, the New York World, in which he described the Spanish regime in Havana as a “woman-killing outfit down there in Cuba.”

In 1899, Remington described the assignment to Cuba in a magazine article that further challenges the notion “everything” was “quiet” in Cuba when he was there in early 1897.

“I saw ill-clad, ill-fed Spanish soldiers bring their dead and wounded into” Havana, Remington wrote, “dragging slowly along in ragged columns. I saw scarred Cubans with their arms bound stiffly behind them being marched to the Cabanas,” a fortress near Havana harbor. The country-side, Remington said, “was a pall of smoke” from homes of Cubans that had been set afire.

He wrote that he shook his fist in anger at Havana as he left for New York aboard a passenger steamer in mid-January 1897, saying he looked forward to returning only in the company of 100,000 American soldiers.

Remington’s sketches and words, I wrote in Getting It Wrong, “leave no doubt that he had seen a good deal of war-related disruption in Cuba. The island during his brief visit was anything but ‘quiet.'”

Still, I noted, “it remains some-thing of a mystery why Remington never publicly addressed Creelman’s anecdote.”

In any event, the evidence is overwhelming that the Remington-Hearst anecdote is false. And it is not divisible; if one half is apocryphal, the other must be, too.

A half-embrace is wholly untenable.

WJC

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Sketches published 115 years ago undercut a tenacious media myth

In 1897, Anniversaries, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Spanish-American War on January 24, 2012 at 5:25 am

On assignment for Hearst

The artist Frederic Remington was back from Havana just a few days when on January 24, 1897, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal began publishing his sketches of the Cuban rebellion against Spanish colonial rule.

Remington later confided that he didn’t think much of the Journal’s reproduction techniques. But the newspaper played up Remington’s artwork, publishing them beneath an extravagant headline that read:

“Cuban War Sketches Gathered in the Field by Frederic Remington; The Gifted Artist, Visiting Cuba Especially for the Journal, Describes with Pen and Pencil Characters That Are Making the War Famous and Infamous.”

The prominent display given the sketches, and the Journal’s flattering references to the artist, serve to undercut a tenacious and prominent media-driven myth, an anecdote that ranks as one of the most popular in American journalism.

And that is the hoary tale that Hearst, in a telegraphic exchange with Remington, vowed to “furnish the war” with Spain.

As I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, the exchange, if it happened, would have occurred on or about January 17, 1897, when Remington was preparing to leave Cuba and return to New York.

Hearst had sent Remington and the correspondent Richard Harding Davis to Cuba to report on the rebellion against Spanish rule, a vicious conflict that gave rise in 1898 to the Spanish-American War.

Remington and Davis didn’t get along and parted ways after only a few days in Cuba. According to legend, Remington before leaving sent a cable to Hearst that said:

“Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return.”

In reply, Hearst supposedly told Remington:

“Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”

Remington left anyway, taking the passenger steamer Seneca to New York, arriving January 21, 1897. His Cuba sketches began appearing in the Journal 115 years ago today.

So how do those sketches help debunk the tale about Hearst’s vow “furnish the war”?

As I discuss in Getting It Wrong, the sketches “depict unmistakable (if unremarkable) scenes of a rebellion — a scouting party of Spanish cavalry with rifles at the ready; a cluster of Cuban non-combatants trussed and bound and being herded into Spanish lines; a scruffy Cuban rebel kneeling to fire at a small Spanish fort; a knot of Spanish soldiers dressing a comrade’s leg wound.”

Their subject matter effectively disputes the notion that Remington had found “everything … quiet” in Cuba.

Remington, 'gifted artist'

That the sketches were accompanied by glowing references to Remington as a “gifted artist” indicates that Hearst was not angry with Remington as he surely would have been had the artist left Cuba after being told “please remain.”

Indeed, it is difficult to believe Hearst would have been so generous in his compliments and ordered such prominent display of Remington’s work had the artist in fact disregarded Hearst’s instructions to stay in Cuba.

“Far from being irritated and displeased with Remington,” I write in Getting It Wrong, “Hearst was delighted with his work. He recalled years later that Remington and Richard Harding Davis, the celebrated writer who traveled to Cuba with the artist, ‘did their work admirably and aroused much indignation among Americans’ about Spanish rule of the island.”

The sole source of the “furnish the war” anecdote was James Creelman, who in January 1897 was neither with Hearst in New York nor with Remington in Cuba. Creelman then was in Spain, as the Journal’s “special commissioner,” or correspondent, on the Continent.

Creelman incorporated the anecdote about the Remington-Hearst exchange in a book of reminiscences, On the Great Highway, which was published in 1901. Creelman, a blustery, cigar-chomping egotist, did not say how he learned about the purported Remington-Hearst exchange, which he presumes to quote verbatim.

Hearst denied ever having sent such a message. Remington apparently never spoke about the supposed exchange.

The display Remington’s sketches received in Hearst’s Journal, and the newspaper’s compliments about the artist, are two of several compelling reasons for doubting the anecdote and treating it as a media myth.

Another reason is that the telegrams Remington and Hearst supposedly sent have never turned up.

The anecdote, moreover, is illogical on its face: It would have made no sense for Hearst to have vowed to “furnish the war” because war — the rebellion against Spanish rule — was the reason he sent Remington to Cuba in the first place.

WJC

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BBC calls Hearst vow apocryphal, quotes it anyway

In 1897, Debunking, Furnish the war, Media myths, Spanish-American War, Yellow Journalism on July 15, 2011 at 10:28 am

Apocryphal but still quotable.

That’s how Britain’s venerable broadcaster, the BBC, treated the mythical anecdote about media titan William Randolph Hearst and his purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain in the late 19th century.

In an article posted online yesterday, the BBC described Hearst as the “definitive [news] baron” and declared:

“He’s credited with the invention of tabloid journalism in the 1890s when his New York Journal began a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. He also had a reputation as a warmonger.

“‘You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war,’ goes an apocryphal instruction he was supposed to have sent in a telegram to an illustrator in Havana.”

That’s right, the line is apocryphal. What, then, is the point in using it? As a none-too-clever, back-handed way of buttressing the dubious notion that Hearst and his newspapers were capable of fomenting a war?

That’s sloppy journalism from a leading international news organization.

As I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, Hearst’s purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain is a particularly tenacious media-driven myth — a prominent but dubious tale about journalism that masquerades as factual.

I note that the tale about Hearst’s vow “has achieved unique status as an adaptable, hardy, all-purpose anecdote, useful in illustrating any number of media sins and shortcomings.

“It has been invoked to illustrate the media’s willingness to compromise impartiality, promote political agendas, and indulge in sensationalism. It has been used, more broadly, to suggest the media’s capacity to inject malign influence into international affairs.”

Hearst: Didn't say it

Reasons 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 supposedly made the statement — in an exchange with the artist Frederic Remington, on assignment to Cuba — has never turned up.

Plus, Hearst denied making such a vow.

Not only that, but the anecdote lives on lives on despite what I call “an irreconcilable internal inconsistency.” That is, it would have been absurd for Hearst to vow to “furnish the war” because war— specifically, the Cuban rebellion against Spanish colonial rule— was the reason he sent Remington to Cuba in the first place.

The artist was in Cuba for just six days in January 1897. By that time, the Cuban rebellion — a war for political independence — had reached islandwide proportions. “Anyone reading U.S. newspapers in early 1897 would have been well aware that Cuba was a theater of a nasty war,” I write in Getting It Wrong.

Given the context, Hearst’s purported vow is utterly illogical.

And to invoke the anecdote knowing that it’s apocryphal is little short of disingenuous.

The BBC’s reference to Hearst’s being “credited with the invention of tabloid journalism in the 1890s” also is questionable.

Hearst’s style of flamboyant journalism certainly helped inspire the epithet “yellow journalism,” but he was no father of tabloid journalism.

If anything, Hearst was a latecomer to that genre.

As David Nasaw wrote in The Chief, his admirably even-handed biography of Hearst, the press baron didn’t embrace the tabloid until the 1920s “because he was not comfortable with the format.

“He  had no interest in publishing a picture newspaper that had little room for political coverage, columns, cartoons, and the editorials he cared so much about.”

WJC

Many thanks to Instapundit
Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post.

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Media myth and Truthout

In 1897, Debunking, Media myths, Newspapers, Spanish-American War, Yellow Journalism on February 3, 2011 at 6:47 am

It’s at least faintly ironic that an online news site called Truthout — which asserts an embrace of “equality, democracy, human rights, accountability and social justice” — would post a reference to one of American journalism’s most enduring and delicious media myths.

Not Hearst's doing

In its serializing a book by radio host Thom Hartmann, Truthout the other day indulged in the myth that William Randolph Hearst vowed to “furnish the war” with Spain in 1898 — and then made good on the supposed pledge.

The installment Truthout posted Monday said Hearst “had cabled his artist correspondent to Cuba, Frederick[sic] Remington, ‘You provide the pictures, and I’ll provide the war.’

“Hearst came through on his end of the deal, and the Spanish-American War—started largely by his newspapers and the public sentiment they controlled ….”

As I discuss in my latest book, Getting It Wrong, the anecdote about Hearst’s vow is almost certainly apocryphal — a media-driven myth.

And so is the notion that Hearst’s newspapers fomented the Spanish-American War.

In the first chapter of Getting It Wrong, I note that the Remington-Hearst tale remains popular “despite a nearly complete absence of supporting documentation. It lives on even though telegrams supposedly exchanged by Remington and Hearst have never turned up. It lives on even though Hearst denied ever sending such a message.”

Moreover, I write:

The anecdote endures “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.”

Given the context of Remington’s assignment, a vow to “furnish the war” simply would have been incongruous, and illogical.

Had Hearst sent such an inflammatory telegram, it surely would have been intercepted by Spanish censors, who controlled incoming and outgoing cable traffic in Cuba. Spanish authorities undoubtedly would have called attention to what would have been a clear case of Hearst’s meddling.

So it’s highly improbable that a cable containing a vow to “furnish the war” would have flowed without interruption between Hearst in New York and Frederic Remington in Havana. (Had the cable been sent, it would have been in mid-January 1897, near the end of Remington’s lone pre-war visit to Cuba.)

Moreover, no one who repeats the purported vow seems to note, or much care, that Hearst denied having sent such a message and Remington, a prominent artist of the American West, apparently never spoke about it.

The related myth — that Hearst’s newspapers brought on the conflict with Spain — is just as hardy as “furnish the war.” Like many media myths, it offers a reductive, simplistic, and easy-to-remember version of a complex historical event.

The Spanish-American War, quite simply, was not caused by the contents of Hearst’s newspapers, of which he had three at the time — two in New York City, one in San Francisco.

As I discuss in my 2001 book, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies:

“The yellow press [of Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer] is not to blame for the Spanish-American-War. It did not force—it could not have forced—the United States into hostilities with Spain over Cuba in 1898. The conflict was, rather, the result of a convergence of forces far beyond the control or direct influence of even the most aggressive of the yellow newspapers, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal.”

Besides, no one who asserts that the yellow press was responsible for the war with Spain can persuasively demonstrate just how the often-exaggerated contents of Hearst and Pulitzer’s newspapers were decisive in the declaration of war in April 1898.

“If the yellow press did foment the war,” I wrote in Yellow Journalism, then “researchers should be able to find some hint of, some reference to, that influence in the personal papers and the reminiscences of policymakers of the time.

“But neither the diary entries of cabinet officers nor the contemporaneous private exchanges among American diplomats indicate that the yellow newspapers exerted any influence at all.”

When it was discussed within the administration of President William McKinley, the yellow press was dismissed as a nuisance or disdained at as a complicating factor.

The truth is that the yellow press neither drove, shaped, nor  crystallized U.S. policy vis-à-vis Spain in 1898.

Put another way: Hearst did not follow through on a vow he never made.

WJC

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