American press coverage of the United States' foray into the Philippines late in the nineteenth century passed through several stages, one of the most crucial of which tends to be underappreciated, not only in terms of its impact, but for the distinct conditions it offered for frank reportage about the new Other being confronted across the Pacific. After the celebratory bombast over Commodore George Dewey's easy naval victory in Manila Bay in the spring of 1898 and before the obfuscatory, nationalistic coverage of the grueling Philippine land war that began February 4, 1899, a crucial interregnum ensued in which journalists negotiated unfamiliar terrain with relative freedom from external editorial orientation -- a condition attributable primarily to the inchoate official policy of the period.
The situation presented a window of opportunity for independence-seeking Filipinos to convince Americans of their capacity for self-government. Though their effort to project their voice across the Pacific largely failed, it was not entirely for lack of a hearing in the American press. Ignorance and cultural myopia, active military censorship and a preponderance of pro-expansionist sentiment among publishers, among other things, produced an abundance of negative images of Filipinos and their homeland, but the first correspondents on the scene provided a measure of the new Other more detailed than was common before or after the ten-month interval of uncertainty, revealing Filipino leaders, if not average citizens, in often telling detail. This paper examines some of the first American reporters' perspectives on the Philippines and especially the thwarted republic's young leader, Emiho Aguinaldo, who became a focal point of coverage during a period when the Filipino perspective was at least paid lip service, if not seriously considered in the formation of policy.
Last updated: November 24, 1997
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