John R. Rathom

John Revelstoke Rathom (1868–1923) was an Australian-born American journalist, editor, and writer based in Rhode Island and employed as the editor of The Providence Journal at the height of his career. In the years before America entered World War I, Rathom assisted British Intelligence at Wellington House as an agent of influence by publishing British propaganda, including false or exaggerated allegations of German war crimes, as articles in The Providence Journal. These articles were widely republished by other American newspapers and helped ensure American entry as an ally of the British Empire in the war against Imperial Germany. Rathom's claims that his newspaper routinely uncovered German espionage plots were also later revealed as fraudulent, although his reputation as an heroic anti-German crusader endured. He later engaged in a long public dispute with Franklin Delano Roosevelt early in the future president's career. He cut a large figure in the world of journalism and as a political spokesman advocating Anglophilia, anti-White ethnic sentiment, the Special Relationship, and anti-communism, while denouncing the League of Nations.

Time magazine described him as a firm believer in the old newspaper saying, "Raise hell and sell papers."^[1] In 2004, The Providence Journal acknowledged that most of Rathom's coverage was a fraud: "In truth, the Providence Journal had acquired numerous inside scoops on German activities, mostly from British intelligence sources who used Rathom to plant anti-German stories in the American media." Upon his death in 1923, Time magazine reported that Rathom's two newspapers were "said to be one of the most money-making magazine combinations in the U. S."^[1]