Talk:William Randolph Hearst

which one?=

it says in one paragraph he was born in sf, but in the table it says he was born in ringwood, nj. which one is right?

It's San Fran Whitesoxfanatic 20:47, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

comment

changed the languaging where it previously appeared that Marion Davies was the wife of Hearst and that Orson Welles owned RKO studio. Jay 11:29, Sep 6, 2003 (UTC)

My source for Hearst's having been expelled from Harvard ,for the chamber pot stunt, is Imperial Hearst by Ferdinand Lundberg.Tjc 10:48, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why does this article rely on a book by a Canadian Stalinist that apparently embarrassed even the Canadian Communist Party whose press originally printed it (it was soon withdrawn from circulation) and which has about as much reliability about the Ukrainian faminine as Holocaust deniers have about the Holocaust? See http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/mace16.htm

The family section needs to be re-thought, as it seems at the moment to just be an excuse to mention Patty Hearst. On that subject, Patty Hearst wasn't pardoned by President Carter, she was pardoned by President Clinton shortly before his retirement from presidency. President Carter commuted her sentence. His five sons are mentioned only very briefly, and their families not at all. Patty could be mentioned under her own heading, much like the Thomas Ince affair.

Wash Times

Removed Washington Times from the list of newspapers he owned (the Times was started by the Unification Church in the 1980s, way after Hearst's time.)

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Added Washington Times back to the list of newspapers he owned.

The current Washington Times publication has nothing to do with the previously existing newspaper of the same name, which was established in 1893 and later became the Times-Herald, and then The Post. See 'Notes' under the wiki:Washington Times page.

spanish american war

"Hearst did cause the Spanish-American War of 1898, and he certainly publicized it, trying to sell more copies than his rival Pulitzer."

Hearst caused it? How responsible is that statement?

POV

This article is a mess. Not withstanding the above comment about the Spanish-American War (which is absolutely false: see Yellow Journalism), the piece engages in the laziest, most stereotypical discussion of Hearst's politics and journalism without providing any context whatsoever -- for a start:

• Hearst "routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures and distorted real events." And so did almost every other newspaper of the time; ideas of objectivity had not taken hold in American journalism, and readers expected fiction in their stories (See David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, p.79).
• The lead does not summarize the article; it merely lays a litany of attacks on Hearst without summarizing his life or his role in the history of journalism.
• "While World War II restored circulation and advertising revenues, his great days were over." Er, no. Hearst papers benefitted from a post-war boom in circulation and were probably as profitable as they had ever been upon his death in 1951.
• "Conceding an end to his political hopes, Hearst became involved in an affair with popular film actress and comedienne Marion Davies (1897–1961), and from about 1919 he lived openly with her in California." I've never read any source that says that Hearst started his affair because his "political hopes" were over. Not only was it common for rich men to "keep" women (Nasaw, 67), Nicholas Longworth shows us that one could engage in romantic affairs and still assume political power. Hearst was a frequent theater-goer, and whatever his reasons for getting into a relationship with Marion Davies, politics was not one of them.
• "The Self-Serving Lie" -- I have no idea what this is doing in a biography of Hearst; at best, it deserves a single line or movement into an article about marijuana.

Beyond this, the article desperately needs an expanded section on Citizen Kane, the growth of his empire, the New York Journal's 1890 heyday and Hearst's other media outlets (magazines and movies).--Idols of Mud 14:46, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

POV

The fact that this man published statements about marijuana using his publications to serve his financial needs in a manner that has had reprucussions on MILLIONS of lives is no small fact to be relegated to a topic that will be seen by very few. People need to see what this man did with his papers. A lie perpetrated that I find closely related to my life.

Article is a mess up top

The article is a mess, the first 6 areas is just three topics that are duplicated. I'm going to go ahead and delete the repeated ones Whitesoxfanatic 20:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Harvard?

I read in World Book that he was kicked out of Harvard for a practical joke but it didn't say what if someone knows it would make good trivia