Hearst was born in San Francisco on April 29, 1863, the son of the American industrialist and politician George Hearst and the philanthropist Phoebe Apperson Hearst. For a time he attended Harvard University but was expelled. In 1887 Hearst took over his father's newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner. As editor of the paper, he used the sensational journalistic methods later called yellow journalism. Hearst and the paper prospered. In 1895 he purchased the New York Morning Journal and in 1896 began publication of the Evening Journal. Within months, the combined daily circulation of these two papers had reached the then unprecedented figure of 1.5 million.

Hearst was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat from New York City in 1903 and 1905. In 1904 he sought but failed to win the presidential nomination of his party. He ran for mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909 and for governor of New York State in 1906, but was defeated each time. Later he made several unsuccessful attempts to win another nomination for the governorship.

Meanwhile, Hearst was steadily expanding his journalistic empire until in 1927 he controlled a chain of 25 newspapers published in major cities of the U.S. He developed the International News Service, a press agency. Articles, comic strips, and columns of opinion and gossip were syndicated or distributed to all papers of his chain for simultaneous publication. Hearst also entered the field of magazine publishing. Eventually his magazine properties included Hearst's International-Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazaar, and Town and Country. The economic depression of the 1930s caused Hearst to reduce his holdings to 17 newspapers. The largest among them, in terms of circulation, were the New York Daily Mirror, the New York Journal-American, the Chicago Herald-American, the Los Angeles Examiner, and the Boston Sunday Advertiser.

Hearst began producing newsreels about 1911. Later he controlled both Hearst-Metrotone News, a large newsreel company, and Hearst Cosmopolitan Film Corp., producer of feature films. His other businesses included industrial investments in South America and Africa. He also collected art for his vast estate at San Simeon, California, which included a zoo, an airport, a private theater, and guest houses that are reassembled French châteaus.

Through his extensive publishing and film enterprises, Hearst was able to exert a great influence on American public opinion. Late in the 19th century, for example, reports in his newspapers on Spanish atrocities in Cuba so aroused the public that the U.S. declared war against Spain. The policies advocated by Hearst's publications made him one of the most controversial figures of his time. He was denounced by many for his isolationist policy and extreme nationalism and praised by others as a patriot. Hearst died on August 14, 1951, in Beverly Hills, California.