clair055

You reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office--six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio." Will the clerk say, "Yes, sir," and go do the task? On your life he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions: Who was he? Which encyclopedia? Where is the encyclopedia? I was hired for that? Don't you mean Bismarck? What's the matter with Charlie doing it? Is he dead? Is there any hurry? Sha'n't I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself? What do you want to know for? And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him to try to find [Correggio]--and then come back and tell you there is no such man....

The Spanish American War tends to be the event where the term yellow journalism arises, and in my opinion it is an appropriate spot to discuss the role of media regarding war and foreign policy . There is no smoking gun, but it can be argued the headline wars between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal helped to fan the flames of war. Both papers sensationalized news events such as the sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor in 1898. Even today after numerous investigations we still aren’t sure if the Maine exploded due to an accident on board or due to actions by the Spanish. Both Pulitzer and Hearst told their readers the Spanish were responsible  even through there was no proof. They hyped the story to feed a public hungry for revenge though some argue folks outside of New York did not see the sensationalistic reports, therefore the papers really didn’t really cause the war. I agree somewhat……there were other thi...