HARBORING
MOTIVES
Above, Havana
Harbor in 1904.
During the U.S.
occupation of
Cuba—which
lasted, on and
off, until 1909—
the Americans
modernized and
deepened the harbor
as well as opened
the island up to U.S.
business interests.
BRIDGEMAN/AGE FOTOSTOCKwoman standing in the open with three men
around her. The drawing, which covered two-
thirds of a page of theNew York Journal,was
a gross distortion. Women, not men, had
done the searches behind closed doors, not in
plain sight above deck.
Intense competition to best each other in
the field—and to justify their enormous in-
vestment in Cuba coverage—resulted in equal-
ly intense newspaper criticism of each other
at home. The over-the-top New York Journal
story led Pulitzer’s Wo r l d to condemn Davis
and Remington, saying they should be “quar-
antined before they are allowed to mingle again
with reputable newspaper men.” Deeply em-
barrassed, Davis unfairly put all the blame on
Hearst and vowed he would never work for
him again.
Turning Yellow
Newspapers spent tens of thousands of dollars
cabling news. The Associated Press had 23 re-
porters on the job and five press boats. Almost
unbelievably, Hearst had twice as many of both.
The boats ferried uncensored dispatches to
Florida and gave reporters a good view of naval
military action. When the U.S. battleship Maine
was sunk in Havana Harbor under mysterious
circumstances (the cause remains disputed to
this day and were at one time investigated by the
National Geographic Society), three newspapers
sent their own diving teams to investigate.
Newspaper proprietors like Hearst believed
in muscular journalism. He sent a $2,000 sword
and medical supplies to the commander of the
Cuba rebels, organized a delegation of congress-
men to visit Cuba as “Journal commissioners,”NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 85