USS Maine Explosion - Yellow Journalism Manufactures War Fever

An explosion tears through the hull of the USS Maine anchored in Havana Harbor, Cuba, sinking the ship and killing 266 American sailors. Sober observers and an initial report by the colonial government of Cuba conclude the explosion occurred on board, but newspaper magnates William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, who have spent years selling papers by fanning anti-Spanish public opinion, immediately publish rumors of Spanish plots to sink the ship. When informed of the disaster, Hearst tells his editors at the New York Journal to “spread the story all over the page. This means war.” Hearst offers a $50,000 reward for solving the mystery but makes clear whom he considers guilty. The New York World and Journal both publish a fabricated “suppressed cable” from the Maine’s captain to Navy Secretary John D. Long claiming the explosion was not accidental—the cable is a complete fake.

The incident exemplifies “yellow journalism,” a term born from the rivalry between Pulitzer’s World and Hearst’s Journal competing for readership through sensationalistic and often fabricated reporting. The name derives from a popular cartoon strip “Hogan’s Alley” featuring the “Yellow Kid” character, with a New York Press critic coining “Yellow-Kid Journalism” to shame the newspapers’ sensationalistic approach. For several years both publishers have used Cuban suffering under Spanish rule to drive circulation, regularly publishing exaggerated or invented atrocities. Though Joseph Pulitzer’s World initially editorializes that “Nobody outside a lunatic asylum” would think Spain stupid enough to destroy the Maine, this doesn’t stop the newspaper from darkly reporting “Spanish treachery.” When a U.S. naval investigation states the explosion came from a mine in the harbor (rather than internal accident), yellow journalism proponents seize upon it and demand war.

Congress and President McKinley send an ultimatum to Spain to withdraw from Cuba on April 20, 1898. Spain severs diplomatic ties the next day and declares war on April 23. The Spanish-American War becomes the first conflict in which military action is precipitated by media involvement, marking both a turning point in propaganda history and the beginning of yellow journalism as a practice. Though some historians argue the papers did not create anti-Spanish sentiments from nothing and influential figures like Theodore Roosevelt were already driving expansion, the manufactured crisis demonstrates how concentrated media ownership can manipulate public opinion toward war. A 1974 team of naval historians determines the explosion actually originated within the vessel, with computer analysis indicating high likelihood that proximity of a coal bunker to an ammunition magazine catalyzed a chain reaction—confirming the initial assessment that yellow journalism deliberately ignored to manufacture a casus belli serving both newspaper circulation and imperialist expansion.