One of the obstacles to writing a balanced assessment of prominent figures in the recent past is that they are still hedged about with the prejudices they attracted during their lifetime. For William Randolph Hearst, who died in 1951, the problem is compounded because he elicited such strong emotions in his lifetime, emotions that still exist forty years later in those who are old enough to remember him - “a monster” was a recent reaction to the news that Hearst was the subject of this study.

Not only this, but the literature surrounding Hearst - if the term is rather...

The Hearst press, which dominated American journalism for at least forty years, may be said to have come into existence in 1895. In that year, after eight years of perfecting - on his first newspaper, theSan Francisco Examiner,a gift from his father - the techniques that were to revolutionize the American newspaper industry, William Randolph Hearst returned to the eastern United States, where he had spent a brief and undistinguished career at Harvard and a short spell studying Joseph Pulitzer’sNew York World,and bought theNew York Journal. In the same year, the first Hearst syndicate was...

From its beginnings with theSan Francisco Examinerand theNew York Journal,acquired, though rather differently, in 1887 and 1895 respectively, the Hearst chain of newspapers spread, so that by the mid- 19305, at its greatest extent, “the Chief” owned newspapers in almost every major city in the country and, according to one estimate, controlled a circulation of 5,100,000 with his daily papers and of 6,800,000 with his Sunday papers.¹ Two years later the Hearst organization gave the circulation figures as 6,889,000 for the dailies and 7,364,000 for the Sunday papers and estimated that approximately 30 million people read...

When William Randolph Hearst died in 1951, most of the British newspapers that commented on his passing noted his reputation as an anglophobe.¹ This belief was widespread in England and the United States, but Hearst strongly denied it.² However, it is impossible to read his editorials over the years and take seriously his protestations that he entertained the “friendliest feelings” towards England - or indeed towards any of the major European powers on whose actions and affairs he commented.

As a strong proponent of Americanism and American democracy, he was offended by most of the European monarchies and by the...

Between the two world wars William Randolph Hearst published a pamphlet that brought together some of his earlier statements on American foreign relations and international affairs. In it he argued that the United States, having become unnecessarily involved in one European war and having spent thereon enormous amounts of blood and treasure, should never be drawn into another - which, after the Versailles settlement, he believed to be inevitable. However, it was unimportant which nations of Europe were dominant, on the Continent or elsewhere: what was important was that, wherever government was in question, it should be “good, sound, stable,...

In July 1902 a Hearst editorial commented that the government of Czar Nicholas II “should be made to understand that while it refuses human rights to human beings it is looked upon as a pirate among nations.” Warming to this theme, the editorial continued that Russia “should be made to feel that no nation wants it for a friend. Especially should this be so in America. As well sympathize and make treaties with a cannibal chief in the South Seas as with a Russian that kills liberty. The cannibal chief simply eats a few men ... The Russian government destroys...

The change occurred in the mid-thirties as Hearst came to grips with the implications of Soviet rule in Russia. In November 1933 the United States government, strongly supported by the Hearst papers, recognized the Soviet Union. Less than eighteen months later the same newspapers suggested that this recognition should be withdrawn. Thereafter the Hearst press rarely had a good word to say for the Soviet Union and its ruling party. This chapter will attempt to explain the reversal of policy shown by these two positions.

Up to the time when the United States recognized the Soviet Union, Hearst had separated...

The search for international peace preoccupied Hearst as it did all other practitioners and observers of international relations of his time. He believed, or affected to believe, that war would eventually disappear from the earth. Early in 1911, commenting on a statement by a Hungarian statesman that wars could be reduced in size and destructiveness but never abolished, theExaminerargued that this was simply not true, that “the modern world has inherited war as it has inherited the white plague,” and that “both are marked for total abolishment.” It was naive to believe that this could be done “by...

Apart from the Spanish-American War, which Hearst did everything in his power to encourage, the United States fought in two conflicts of far greater importance during the period covered by this study. During the approach to U.S. involvement in both cases, between summer 1914 and spring 1917 and between fall 1939 and December 1941, Hearst marshalled all his forces to prevent his country’s participation. In doing so, he presented a picture of extraordinary certainty as the nation and its government wrestled with dilemmas presented by war in Europe. On 5 August 1914, the day after war broke out in Europe,...

Perhaps the most striking and remarkable feature of the foreign policies the Hearst press advocated between 1895 and the outbreak of the Second World War is their consistency. Throughout his career Hearst was continually accused of capriciousness, of changing his mind for reasons he seldom made clear, and these charges are, to a considerable extent, justified. He never made a virtue of consistency, maintaining that it was better to be right than consistent, and on many issues he changed direction rapidly and dramatically.¹ This behaviour was true of his crusades concerning foreign policy, particularly when they were concerned with the...

The period covered by this study contains all or part of the administrations of ten presidents of the United States, from the later years of Grover Cleveland’s second term to the first half of Harry S Truman’s second term. In between, the Hearst newspapers provided commentary on the presidential policies and conduct of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Roosevelt. Hearst’s relations with all except two were almost invariably bad.

The exceptions were Harding and Coolidge. As a veteran campaigner against corruption in government, Hearst was appalled by and...

Although the Hearst papers were not mentioned by name in the intelligence reports quoted at the end of the previous chapter, there can be no doubt that they were foremost among those regarded as “sedulously fostering” suspicion of America’s allies. As the war began for the United States, the Hearst papers advocated support for the administration and the war effort.¹ Before long, however, Hearst was taking issue with the policies of the government and its allies. He regarded it as “our duty, as a now open and declared ally of England in this war, ... [and] to our selfish advantage”...