even the respectable New York
Times was not above outlandish
reporting during the late 19th century,
and it employed one of the greatest
literary hoaxers in American history:
William Francis Mannix. Reporting
from Cuba in late 1895, Mannix
wrote breathless stories filled with
daring escapades across military
lines, passionate rebels, and bloody
battles. Enraged by his ability to
avoid censorship, Spanish authorities
ordered Mannix to leave Cuba in
February 1896. The New York Times
supported its reporter, calling his
expulsion “unjust.” Mannix seemeda hero—until reporters exposed him
as a fraud. Rather than reporting from
battle, he was writing in a Havana bar.
His stories included forged letters
purported to have been written by
Cuban leaders and then reprinted in
his dispatches. As one critic noted,
Mannix put the insurgent president
in a city that did not exist and made
up names for people mentioned in
the letters. Mannix was not the only
reporter to invent stories, but he was
one of the most flagrant.FICTION AND FORGERY
to Our Lady of Pity... And I believe these prayers
will be heard in the United States.”
Those prayers were recycled in quickie books
by Bonsal and others. Advances in photogra-
phy made the plight of the Cubans vivid. The
subsequent success of Collier’s magazine was
attributed to the attention it received for exten-
sive photographic coverage of the conflict. Two
motion picture tinkerers, Albert E. Smith and
J. Stuart Blackton, created the first newsreels,
dramatizing the sinking of the Maine and Roo-
sevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill. “With nation-
alistic feeling at fever pitch,” one them said, “we
set out to photograph what the people wanted
to see.”
The Junta, the Cuba lobbying organization
in the United States, published its own news-
papers, planted reporters at the New Orleans
Times-Picayune and the Washington Star, and
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 87THE NEW YORK TIMES (BELOW) COVERED SPAIN’S
EXPULSION FROM CUBA OF W. F. MANNIX IN FEBRUARY 1896.
CLIPPINGS: NY TIMES. MAP: SPL/AGE FOTOSTOCKCUBAN REBELS UNDER
THE COMMAND OF
MÁXIMO GÓMEZ, 1898
PHOTO 12/ALAMY/ACI