Answer:
The New York Journal and the New York World, owned respectively by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, gave the collapse of the Maine an intense news coverage, but used tactics that would later be labeled as "yellow press". Both newspapers exaggerated and distorted the information, sometimes reaching "newsmaking" when none was available that fit their editorial line. During the week following the collapse, the Journal devoted eight and a half pages to news, editorials and images about the tragedy. Its editors sent a team of reporters and artists to Havana, including Frederic Remington, and Hearst announced a $ 50,000 "reward for the conviction of criminals who sent 258 American sailors to their deaths." The World, although without reaching the shrill levels and tone of the Journal, nevertheless entered into a similar theatricality, continually insisting that the Maine had been bombed or mined. Privately, Pulitzer believed that "no one outside a madhouse" could really believe that Spain had decided to destroy the Maine. However, this did not stop World from insisting that the only atonement that Spain could offer to the United States for the loss of the ship and the lives of its sailors was the complete independence of Cuba. The Spanish authorities were also blamed for not having guaranteed the security of the port of Havana, and the American public, already agitated by the news that came from the war in Cuba, was driven into a real state of hysteria.
