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William Randolph Hearst

American newspaper publisher (1863–1951)

William Randolph Hearst (29 April 1863 – 14 August 1951) was an American newspaper publisher who built the nation's largest newspaper chain and whose methods profoundly influenced the history of American journalism. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 after being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father. Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and engaged in a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World that led to the creation of yellow journalism—sensationalized stories featuring crime, corruption, and sex, and of sometimes dubious veracity. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world.

According to American principle and practice the public is the ruler of the State, and in order to rule rightly it should be informed correctly.

He was twice elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives, and ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909 and for Governor of New York in 1906. His life story was the main inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, the lead character in Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane.

Quotes

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We hold that no person or set of persons can properly establish a standard of expression for others.
 
Whatever is right can be achieved through the irresistible power of awakened and informed public opinion. Our object, therefore, is not to enquire whether a thing can be done, but whether it ought to be done, to so exert the forces of publicity that public opinion will compel it be done.
  • We hold that the greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong, that in the exercise thereof people have an inviolable right to express their unbridled thoughts on all topics and personalities, being liable only for the abuse of that right.
    • Platform, Independent League; N.Y. Journal (1 February 1924)
  • We hold that no person or set of persons can properly establish a standard of expression for others.
    • Platform, Independent League; N.Y. Journal (1 February 1924)
  • What has become of the descendants of the irresponsible adventurers, the scapegrace sons, the bond servants, the redemptionists and the indentured maidens, the undesirables, and even the criminals, which made up-not all, of course, but nevertheless a considerable part of-the earliest emigrants to these virgin countries?
    They have become the leaders of the thought of the world, the vanguard in the march of progress, the inspirers of liberty, the creators of national prosperity, the sponsors of universal education and enlightenment.
    • Communication to the American Crime Study Commission (19 May 1929)
  • The NARROW-MINDED BIGOTS have given to this country and to the world freedom of speech, freedom of thought and action and religious liberty.
    • Communication to the American Crime Study Commission (19 May 1929)
  • Any man who has the brains to think and the nerve to act for the benefit of the people of the country is considered a radical by those who are content with stagnation and willing to endure disaster.
    • Interview, Cleveland Plain Dealer (24 October 1932)
  • A politician will do anything to keep his job-even become a patriot.
    • Editorial (28 August 1933)
  • SEVENTH, the text of a newspaper must tell the news.
    The headlines must tell the news.
    The pictures must tell the news.
    The subheads and subtitles must tell the news.
    Please see that the newspapers perform this function.
    • Instructions to E.D. Coblentz (1 March 1938)
  • When free discussion is denied, hardening of the arteries of democracy has set in, free institutions are but a lifeless form, and the death of the republic is at hand.
    • "In the News" (13 June 1941)
  • Please realize that the first duty of newspaper men is the get the news and PRINT THE NEWS.
    • Quoted in Editor & Publisher (12 August 1944)
  • Whatever is right can be achieved through the irresistible power of awakened and informed public opinion. Our object, therefore, is not to enquire whether a thing can be done, but whether it ought to be done, to so exert the forces of publicity that public opinion will compel it be done.
    • Advertisement, N.Y. Herald Tribune (19 August 1946)
  • According to American principle and practice the public is the ruler of the State, and in order to rule rightly it should be informed correctly.
    • N.Y. Journal-American (11 November 1954)


Disputed

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  • You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war.
    • Alleged cable to illustrator Frederic Remington while Hearst was covering the Cuban War of Independence (1898). Campbell, W. Joseph (Professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C.) questions the sources of the alleged quote in both his books Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (2003), p. 72 and Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism (2016), also in a respective blog entry.

Quotes about William Randolph Hearst

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  • The idea to make New York City a state, in case you didn't know, is not original with me. There's been a long struggle for more "home rule," which, although it hasn't focused on statehood, has sought to get us more control over taxes, services and decision-making. Statehood was first proposed by the Mayor of New York in 1861; it was later advocated by such people as William Randolph Hearst and by William F. Buckley in his campaign for Mayor in 1965...
    • Bella Abzug Bella!: Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington (1972)
  • Pickings in the heap of human chaos which usually inspires what William Randolph Hearst called "great American journalism" were scrawny. There were no earthquakes, famines or train wrecks. Billion dollar bank heists had dried up on the editors and of course airplane hijacking hadn't yet been invented.
  • May I state at the out-set, that I always regarded the Hearst press as yellow, violently anti-labor and reactionary? In the course of my organizing activities in several parts of this country, the Hearst press consistently attacked us, blaming the ILG and its organizers for instigating strikes, causing people to lose their jobs, livelihoods, homes, etc. As last as 1936, the Hearst press, writing about the leadership of the CIO in the Roosevelt campaign attacked our ILG and its leadership, including yourself, as Communists. (I was given the distinction of being an Anarchist and a friend of Emma Goldman, an honor I shall never deny.) I recall that in 1927 a similar stunt was performed by Hearst in printing the story of the lives of Sacco-Vanzetti, who were electrocuted, the articles notwithstanding. The Hearst press has already been on the decline for several years because the awakened labor rank and file refused to be bull-dozed any longer. Today, the printing of your story in the classic Hearst sensational style, is simply giving his yellow, reactionary press a new lease on life, to say the least. I followed the articles and must admit that Mr. Joseph Mulvaney, the fellow who induced you to consent to his writing these stories, will be handsomely rewarded by Hearst, for the circulation will surely jump a score of thousands or more. do not know what objectives you aim to reach in consenting to be publicized in such a fashion, save one-to give the writer a chance to earn a living (is he at least a Union man?)
  • Perhaps no editor has been so guilty of stirring up the baser passions of human beings as [|Hearst]. Often in his early years as an editor and publisher, he did some political arousings on the side of the workers. It helped him get circulation. Gradually, however, he evolved a policy which prevailed over all liberal doctrines that he might advocate-devoting his publications to the will of the big moneyed interests to have and to retain everything that they possessed and to insure their hopes of getting more through their 'superior intelligence'
  • Slacker had come into the language as a term of frequent use. Bundles of Hearst newspapers had been burned in Times Square because Hearst was slow in swinging to the Allied cause but in a few weeks he had swung, and American flags were printed all over his daily sheets. So-called pro-Germans were being tarred and feathered by mobs in the West. Frank Little of the I.W.W. executive board had been lynched by business men in Butte, Montana. And new and appalling tales of cruelty to conscientious objectors were coming out of the prisons where they were confined.
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