As technology has advanced, so have weapons of mass deception
By James Perloff
Newspapers were the first vehicle that mainstream media (MSM) used to manipulate Americans into war. The Spanish-American War (1898) was fought over Cuba, which had been a colony of Spain since 1511. By the 19th century, Cuba had become the world’s wealthiest colony and largest sugar producer, and its assets were coveted by the Illuminist cabal, which also wanted Spain neutered as a world power. National City Bank, then America’s preeminent bank, controlled the McKinley White House, loaned the government $200 million to fight the war, and took control of Cuba’s sugar industry afterwards (see Ferdinand Lundberg’s classic 1937 book, America’s Sixty Families).
To get young men to fight and die in Cuba for the banksters, it was necessary to persuade Americans – for the first time – that the U.S. military’s duty was not only self-defense, but “righting wrongs” overseas. It was before and during this war that the media honed a skill that would prove perennially useful: manufacturing fake atrocity stories.
The “Yellow Press,” as it was then appropriately called, was spearheaded by William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. Together they fabricated outlandish atrocity tales about Cuba, such as Spaniards roasting Catholic priests. On October 6, 1896, Hearst’s Journal carried this headline: “CUBANS FED TO SHARKS. Cries Heard at Night – They are Taken Outside the Harbor, and the Silent Ferryman Comes Back Alone.” Pulitzer’s World raved: “RAIDED A HOSPITAL– More than Forty Sick and Wounded Cubans Butchered.” But no hospital even existed in the region the World described.
Hearst’s reporters rarely ventured outside Havana’s bars. Some never even traveled beyond Florida, where they forwarded tales spun by Cuban émigrés. And some stories Hearst invented himself in New York.
Leave a Reply