Probably the most significant contribution to history by the tabloids during the years between 1920 and 1945 is the great collection of photographs that were captured before synchronized strobe lights, choice of film speeds, and small, lightweight cameras. In fact, the use of pictures was one of the primary reasons Joseph Patterson gave for printing the Illustrated Daily News in the morning, for in a letter he stated, “…all morning New York papers are alike and none of them print pictures”.⁹ In fact, the Illustrated Daily News is famous for being America’s first picture tabloid.

One of the first exclusive picture opportunities for the tabloid occurred on September 16, 1920. Captain Edward N. Jackson of the Daily News was on a routine assignment in Wall Street when a dynamite bomb in a horse-drawn wagon went off, killing thirty people and injuring a hundred. Jackson went to work, capturing the best pictures of the disaster. Other photographers soon arrived on the scene, but by then the police had already drawn lines about the explosion area. Jackson consequently was the only journalist to escape with on-the-scene pictures of the victims and first aid work. In cases such as this, history influenced the paper to cover the story, and the paper’s pictorial coverage augmented history by supplying pictures that would have otherwise never existed.

There would soon be another opportunity for the fledgling tabloid paper to capture a unique shot. In the fall of 1920, Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, went on a hunger strike in prison and died. A mass was given on November 26 in New York at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in MacSwiney’s honor. For several weeks Phillip A. Payne, city editor for the Daily News, had supposed that the city’s Sinn Fein sympathizers would break into violence. Payne covered the mass-not inside the cathedral, but outside. Payne guessed that if trouble came it would happen outside the Union Club across the street from the cathedral-for Britain’s Union Jack hung from one of the flagpoles over the doorway. When the mass was over, the Sinn Fein staged a bloody, but not fatal brawl right where Payne figured-in the shadow of England’s flag. The action pictures were outstanding and exclusive.

Perhaps the most controversial picture ever taken was that of Ruth Snyder’s death on the electric chair. Snyder had been convicted, along with Judd Gray, for the murder of her husband, Albert Snyder. The murder and the trial had been national sensations, and Snyder’s sentence made her the first woman ever to die on the electric chair. Several papers sent their fanciest writers to cover the event, but the News had the picture that told the story with stunning simplicity. The scene-Ruth Snyder, hooded, strapped in the wooden execution chair, with the one-word headline saying it all, DEAD!

The picture was extremely difficult to obtain, because no camera had ever been permitted in the death chamber. Prison officials took all precautions to ensure that the most highly publicized executions of the era would go unphotographed. In order to achieve its purpose, the Daily News had to overcome two problems. First, it was necessary to get the camera on the scene even though all witnesses were to be searched. The second obstacle was to get a photographer into the room without anyone knowing that he was a photographer. The News brought up Tom Howard from the Washington bureau of P. &A. Photographs. Since he was not known to any of the other reporters, it was assumed that he was a reporter. To get his picture, Howard strapped a small camera on his ankle and ran a long cable release up his leg and through a hole in his pants pocket. When time came for the picture to be captured, Howard hitched up his trousers cuff just far enough to clear the lens, set his leg in a position which he hoped would aim the camera at the chair, pushed the release. Once he opened the lens, he had to ease it back to close. The bulb exposure had to be made for two reasons. One reason was that fast lenses and fast emulsions had not been devised for making snapshots in artificial light, and the other was that the click of the shutter might be cause for alarm in the stillness of the crucial moment.¹⁰

Another photograph that took ingenuity to retrieve was one depicting the Lake Denmark naval arsenal blowing up. One late afternoon in 1926, this arsenal near Dover, New Jersey, erupted into a night-long series of explosions. State troopers had set up roadblocks and were barring everyone from the scene, including newsmen; however, that would not stop Al Willard and Frank Hause of the Daily News. Willard borrowed a uniform cap that looked like those used by ambulance doctors. With Hause driving, Willard stood on the running board of the car and said “medical” as they approached the roadblock. The car was waved through, and the duo climbed into a tower on the arsenal grounds for a better view. Dodging steel fragments all night long, the two seized exclusive pictures of the event.

Sometimes the controversial picture was not taken by a professional at all. Such was the case of a snapshot taken when the British steamer Vestris wrecked of the Virginia coast on November 12, 1928, costing 110 people their lives. The Daily News dispatched several men to get to the survivors as soon as possible and ask if any of them had taken a picture of the sinking vessel. One photographer, Martin McEvilly, located a member of the Vestris crew who had an undeveloped roll of film in his pocket. He gave the crewman $10, with promise of more to come if the pictures turned out to be good.

One shot captured the essence of the marine disaster, showing the canted deck of the sinking ship and crewmen striving to launch a lifeboat. One member of the crew who had both of his arms broken was leaning against a deckhouse for balance. His face told the story of the tragic event. The picture earned the amateur photographer $1500 for his effort.

As pointed out by a story in the March 31, 1926 edition of The Nation, it is impossible for a picture to tell the full story of an event. In his story, “Journalistic Jazz,” Silas Bent quotes, “Only a small fraction of the news can be photographed. Nearly all news of real consequence is far beyond the reach of the lens…This is why the illustrated tabloid can never be a newspaper, whatever it may call itself. It is based upon the falsity that news generally can be pictured, and pretends to report the day’s happenings through the camera”.¹¹

Another author, Samuel Tenenbaum, addressed this issue in a 1927 story. He iterates, “Of the theories advanced to explain its [tabloid journalism’s] phenomenal and overnight success, the most plausible is the “see and believe” theory. The camera cannot lie. This belief in pictures is almost pathetic. To some extent the fact that errors, exaggerations, and, what is worse, deliberate lies creep into the news columns is known, but this new medium-pictures-the public accepts at its face value”.¹²

“The camera is still in its infancy. What new tricks may be developed with its aid it is difficult to foretell. The newspaper camera may yet compete with the movie camera in inventing and perfecting new tricks to fool the eye”.¹³

Silas Bent continues, “For the photograph is easier to read than nonpareil. The tabloids appear to those who find pictures within their grasp. Picture-features are a throw-back to the intelligence which communicated by means of ideographs, before the alphabet was invented. They are comprehensible to the most numerous audience, the lowest mental common denominator. They enter the consciousness over the lowest threshold” .¹⁴

Perhaps this was the reason for the outstanding success of the tabloid newspaper. A picture newspaper could even be appealing to the flood of immigrants in New York that had yet to learn the language. It was written on a level that was easy to understand and relate to. Joseph Patterson was mainly responsible for this, because he was frequently out on the streets making friends with the proletariat on the street corners. He was often sloppily dressed; he was a regular in bars and at Coney Island.¹⁵

The News also voiced strong political opinions, which certainly had an effect on the general public once it became the country’s leading newspaper in 1924. This was not so from the beginning. On the eve of the elections in 1919, the tabloid had done no more than advise its readers to think carefully before they voted, a very conservative gesture. However, by November 1, 1920, the News not only recommended the election of Harding and Coolidge on the presidential ticket, but also stated its preferences on judges' positions and advocated the payment of a veteran's bonus by the state.¹⁶

The Daily News first tentatively approved of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the former governor of New York, as the Democratic candidate for the presidency in May 1932. “We don’t see as many objections to Roosevelt at President as some people see”.¹⁷ The paper wished that Roosevelt would declare in favor of repealing prohibition, hoping that liquor control would return to individual states. By October the News was definitely committed to Roosevelt, because of his clear-cut support of repealing prohibition.¹⁸

On March 6, 1933, the first working day of the first of four Roosevelt administrations, the News pledged: “This newspaper now pledges itself to support the policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for a period of at least one year”. ¹⁹ One year later, the News reminded its readers of the pledge-but promptly declined to renew it.²⁰ A 1939 edition of Time magazine declared: “Not only did the News support the New Deal, but it devoted itself wholeheartedly to selling it to the people”.²¹ In 1933 the tabloid endorsed the NRA and was one of the first major journals to sign up under the NRA labor-wage code. General Johnson’s famous Blue Eagle, with the legend beneath of “We Do Our Part,” became a common fixture on the editorial page starting on July 16,1933. When the Supreme Court declared the section of the code that made the NRA operable, the paper sided with the President in his notable and unsuccessful battle against the “nine old men”.²² The News supported Roosevelt’s candidacy in 1936 for his share-the-wealth position.²³

The tabloid also took a position on the length of time a president should serve, a critical issue during the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Daily News praised Calvin Coolidge for not accepting a re-election, which, the paper thought, he could have easily obtained.²⁴ George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Theodore Roosevelt were named as the others who had refused to serve “too long.” When F.D.R.’s third term candidacy loomed, the News had a change of heart and supported Roosevelt’s effort.

Although the News was unalterably isolationist, it was quite in favor of arming America to the teeth.²⁵ Martin Sommers wrote many stories in response to the threat of Japan, headed, “Two Ships for One”.²⁶

In fact, President Roosevelt was so convinced that the News’ support pf an unbeatable Navy was key in securing the passage of the “Big Navy” bill in July of 1940, he sent Patterson the pen used to sign the bill.²⁷ The New York Daily News was key in stirring up national pride in the midst of World War II. On Tuesday after Pearl Harbor, the paper spoke with words of courage and determination, "We are in this thing now and the nation is as one man in its resolve to see it through to victory, cost what it may and however long it lasts".²⁸ The News encouraged its readers to buy defense bonds and praised Admiral Nimitz of the U.S. Navy. The publication went even further for General MacArthur: it distributed buttons bearing his likeness.

This nationalistic fervor was somewhat surprising considering the previous war policy of the Daily News and its sister papers, The Chicago Tribune and The Washington Times-Herald. Before Pearl Harbor, the three newspapers held a common policy of irreconcilable isolationism.²⁹ However, even at this point in the war the News wasn’t very concerned with Hitler and remained quite oblivious to the state of the British.³⁰ It declared that "Our No. 1 fight" is in the Pacific, insisting that America should confine its efforts to its own waters.

It was during this time that the News reversed its feeling toward Roosevelt. The breech of support came with the Administration’s advocacy of the “lease-lend” bill (which the tabloid renamed the “dictatorship bill”. Late in 1940 the publication observed, “We’re issuing Britain a blank check”.³¹ By September 13, 1941, the sensationalism was reaching new heights when it announced that the President “has eliminated Congress”.³² It went so far as to say, “If the war lasts until November, 1942, he may feel he has to eliminate the Congressional elections scheduled for that time, because in all likelihood the people will repudiate the war party if allowed to vote at that time”.³³ The hype reached a new pinnacle when the tabloid released a loftier suspicion, wondering whether there would even be a presidential election on Tuesday, November 7, 1944.³⁴ The News launched an editorial campaign-“No fourth term for Caesar”-in which Roosevelt’s rise to power and his clinging to it were compared with Caesar’s own rise and unwillingness to give up.³⁵

Despite the Daily News’s position on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, neither the paper nor the President was greatly affected by it. Roosevelt cruised into his fourth term at the nation’s helm, and by 1945 circulation had reached 2,076,446 daily and 3,887,415 Sunday for the News.