Lies and propaganda are as old as written history, published by individuals to inflate themselves or distort the public image of the enemy, then there is the yellow press and its goal is to publish sensationalism, articles related to scandals and exaggerations of news events to increase sales and circulation, while this type of media irresponsibility is often seen among competing newspapers What is new is the involvement of rival newspapers in the same media lie.

The plan was prepared on the evening of the summer of 1899. The four men were in the bar of the Oxford Hotel in downtown Denver, Colorado. The four men involved in the conspiracy were Al Stevens, Jack Tournay, John Lewis and Hal Wilshire, all journalists from the four Denver newspapers, and they the Post, the Republican, the Times, the Rocky Mountain News, each tasked by their editors-in-chief to come up with something interesting to entertain their readers.

According to an article published by Harry Lieber in 1939, forty years after the event, it was Stevens, a reporter for the Republican newspaper, who suggested that he make up a story, and Denver at the time was full of journalists facing ethical challenges. And the newspaper's office in downtown Denver was known as (The Bucket of Blood) for all the red headlines and the shimmering yellow press the city painted, and Harry Tamin, co-owner of The Post, once said, (The public doesn't just like to be fooled.) He insists on deception.

Insurance bought Denver Evening for $12,500 in 1895 and changed its name to The Denver Post. Under his supervision, the newspaper flourished in just three years. Tameen, like any newspaper owner and editor at this time, aimed to make money, not set journalistic standards, and they rose up. At every opportunity to blackmail people and force them to propaganda and cooperate with them, the newspapers were quick to fabricate any false story.

That night, the Stevens proposed to invent a strong and coherent lie that would arouse the interest of public opinion around the world, and they decided to invent a lie about a far country, China. To San Francisco, he's slated to demolish the Great Wall of China, and they say Louis is negotiating with the Chinese government to demolish part of the wall and use the stone to build a new wall.

The story was published on June 25, 1899 AD, but for unknown reasons, the newspapers did not publish the story with an explicit title on the front page, but it was published in the middle and back pages, and the Rocky Mountain News never published the news, although its reporter was part of the gang, and in Within a few days, several other newspapers across the country took the story and wrote it their own way, one claimed that the bricks of the wall would be used to build dams around the Yangtze River, another claimed that he had spoken to a Chinese official and confirmed the story but the only newspaper that questioned was The New York Time.

It was like this for forty years until one of the editors admitted it and Harry Lee Wheeler gave the story of the Great Wall hoax a new twist in an article he published in 1939 AD, where he greatly exaggerated the story and created the basis for another hoax, and claimed that the story reached China and angered the masses so much that it ignited The Boxer Rebellion, an anti-foreign, anti-colonial and anti-Christian uprising in China that claimed the lives of 32,000 Chinese Christians and hundreds of Western missionaries, Wilbur's hoax was short-lived, only seventeen years later, the truth appeared in the book (The Great Hoax of All Time) published in 1956 AD .