massive investment in high-powered presses.
Some newspapers sought to attract an upscale
readership with fact-based reporting, but even
the New York Times and others with higher
aspirations easily succumbed to sensational
and slipshod reporting when the Cuba story
came along.
The war in Cuba was the biggest foreign
news story for Americans up to that time. By
one count some 75 correspondents covered the
incipient Cuba insurgency in the three years
leading up to the war. A conservative estimate
is that 200 went to the island after Roosevelt’s
Rough Riders saddled up in 1898.
Newspapers spared little in covering the
dramatic news that Cuba offered. Creelman,
handsome Richard Harding Davis, novelist-
journalist Stephen Crane, pioneer combat
photographer Jimmy Hare, and many of their
colleagues were the who’s who of war corre-
spondents. If they brought bias and bravado to
this assignment, they were nevertheless enter-
prising and intrepid. This was a dangerous and
frustrating story to cover. One correspondent
was killed in action. Others were wounded or
felled by malaria or other tropical maladies.
General Weyler hated the American press.
“They poison everything with falsehood!” he
told Creelman.“They ought to be suppressed!”
And so the general did. He heavily censored cor-
respondents’ cables. He tossed journalists in
dank jails and threw them out of the country.
Paradoxically, one of the most sensational
stories resulted indirectly from Weyler’s sup-
pression of news. Davis was so closely watched
by Weyler’s men that he could do little enter-
prise reporting and decided to leave the coun-
try in early 1897. On his homeward bound ship
was Clemencia Arango, the sister of an insur-
gent leader. She told Davis that the Spanish
had searched her and two female compan-
ions three times. In fine Victorian umbrage,
Davis wrote up the account as a litany of in-
dignities, without mentioning the authorities
had good reason for the searches. The women
were carrying secret—and undiscovered—
messages. The story grew all the more lurid
when Remington, now back in New York, sup-
plied an illustration of a slender, starknakedTHE NAKED
TRUTH?
The New York
Journal’s illustration
of a woman stripped
and searched by
Spanish officials.
Female insurgents
were indeed
searched—but
by other women
and behind closed
doors.
civilians pulled at American heart strings.
Helping the Cubans fight for independence re-
affirmed Americans’ belief in the virtues of their
own revolution.
The rebellion jeopardized U.S. trade relations
with and investments in Cuba. But there were
larger reasons than that to go to war. In the late
19th century the United States’ continental
frontiers were gone. International muscle flex-
ing could open foreign markets to keep the U.S.
economy going strong and revitalize Americans’
sense of their Manifest Destiny. Not only would
they enjoy continental sway; they would be a
global power.
The press did not generate these impulses,
but it played upon and amplified them. Creel-
man’s anecdote reflects the pro-war attitudes
of the press and, in being fabricated, reveals the
ease with which correspondents cut corners in
conveying them.Coverage of Cuba
At the end of the 19th century journalism was
still in its infancy. There were no journalism
schools, no company ethics manuals, no jour-
nalism associations to enforce or even suggest
standards. The goal was to get readers, which big
city newspapers could now reach as a result ofLIBRARY OF CONGRESS
84 MARCH/APRIL 2019