Propaganda first became widespread and utilized by the media during the Spanish-American War, fueling a media war during the new age of yellow journalism. One of the main players in this wave of propaganda was Robert Hearst, who highly editorialized the sinking of the USS Maine, running stories claiming that “The War Ship Maine was Split in Two by an Enemy’s Secret Infernal Machine,” that the Spanish had somehow planted a torpedo under the Maine and had remotely detonated it from the land. These claims were made without any evidence, and the Navy themselves even stated that judgement should be suspended until more information came to light. Still, Hearst ran with that narrative, running more headlines such as “Who Destroyed the Maine? $50,000 Reward,” “Spanish Treachery” and “Invasion!” Hearst fueled fear and outrage with his paper. He is most famously quoted as responding to an artist, Fredric Remington, who reported that Cuba was peaceful, as saying “Please Remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.
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Another situation during the Spanish-American war created by Hearst was that of the Olivette incident, in which a young Cuban woman named Clemencia Arango was held in custody in an American ship by Spanish officials going to New York, because she was suspected of delivering letters to rebel leaders. She was searched, which was reported by Richard Harding Davis, a reporter working for Hearst, but when the situation was publicly reported on, Hearst had falsely claimed that it was a situation of sexual harassment, with the woman being brutally stripped and searched. It was such a false claim that Hearst even eventually was forced into printing a letter in which he admitted the search was done properly with no men present. Still, Hearst never published an apology.
The Vietnam War was another war that was full of propaganda, this time from both parties involved. North Vietnam ran a campaign during the war that the US had both completed mass destruction beyond any possible reasonable numbers, yet that a massive number of US troops had been killed or captured. North Vietnam reported numbers such as 630,000 US aggressors killed or captured, and that there had been 38,000 separate US bombings on Vietnamese villages. These numbers were used to influence southern citizens hate the US. Interestingly enough, propaganda art produced by the North was often spread on scraps of paper, since there wasn’t resources to mass produce.
The US ran a propaganda campaign as well, in their case, attempting to influence northern citizens to fear the North. This was done by using the religion of the North Vietnam citizens, pushing a false narrative that the North government had plans to persecute Christians, and that they would be safe under the Catholic friendly government of the South. This plan, known as “The Virgin Mary has Gone South,” was largely successful, as 60% of the 1.5 million North Vietnam Catholics fled to South Vietnam.
Ultimately, propaganda is a dangerous but often successful tool in convincing citizens to either take actions or believe that wars are justified. It is often either highly sensationalized and edited to sound certain ways or is exaggerated, or is completely false, drummed up purely to push narratives of war.
Sources:
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-american-war-yellow-journalism-hearst-pulitzer
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43040494?seq=2
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiusJGxrYL3AhUSkHIEHSQaABAQFnoECEEQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fjournals.troy.edu%2Findex.php%2Ftest%2Farticle%2Fview%2F440%2F356&usg=AOvVaw1re1VFLF4foKKdsXmEN3_8
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/cnngo-travel-vietnam-propaganda-poster-art/index.html
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