Posted on 01/19/2009 5:55:17 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Regarding the second article of this post: Looking at Guam’s position on a map of the Pacific, I would urge that the new base there be heavily defended.
i see that the NYT was even in these days was more concerned about the hurt feelings of potential enemies than about the defense of our nation...
Ukraine Famine - 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths
Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, set in motion events designed to cause a famine in the Ukraine to destroy the people there seeking independence from his rule. As a result, an estimated 7,000,000 persons perished in this farming area, known as the breadbasket of Europe, with the people deprived of the food they had grown with their own hands.
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/Ukraine_famine.htm
____________________________________________________________
Prize Specimen
The campaign to revoke Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer.
Andrew Stuttaford
May 7, 2003
We will never know how many Ukrainians died in Stalin's famines of the early 1930s. As Nikita Khrushchev later recalled, "No one was keeping count." Writing back in the mid- 1980s, historian Robert Conquest came up with a death toll of around six million, a calculation not so inconsistent with later research (the writers of The Black Book of Communism (1999) estimated a total of four million for 1933 alone).
Four million, six million, seven million, when the numbers are this grotesque does the exact figure matter? Just remember this instead:
The first family to die was the Rafalyks — father, mother and a child. Later on the Fediy family of five also perished of starvation. Then followed the families of Prokhar Lytvyn (four persons), Fedir Hontowy (three persons), Samson Fediy (three persons). The second child of the latter family was beaten to death on somebody's onion patch. Mykola and Larion Fediy died, followed by Andrew Fediy and his wife; Stefan Fediy; Anton Fediy, his wife and four children (his two other little girls survived); Boris Fediy, his wife and three children: Olanviy Fediy and his wife; Taras Fediy and his wife; Theodore Fesenko; Constantine Fesenko; Melania Fediy; Lawrenty Fediy; Peter Fediy; Eulysis Fediy and his brother Fred; Isidore Fediy, his wife and two children; Ivan Hontowy, his wife and two children; Vasyl Perch, his wife and child; Makar Fediy; Prokip Fesenko: Abraham Fediy; Ivan Skaska, his wife and eight children.
Some of these people were buried in a cemetery plot; others were left lying wherever they died. For instance, Elizabeth Lukashenko died on the meadow; her remains were eaten by ravens. Others were simply dumped into any handy excavation. The remains of Lawrenty Fediy lay on the hearth of his dwelling until devoured by rats.*
And that's just one village — Fediivka, in the Poltava Province.
We will never know whether Walter Duranty, the principal New York Times correspondent in the U.S.S.R., ever visited Fediivka. Almost certainly not. What we do know is that, in March 1933, while telling his readers that there had indeed been "serious food shortages" in the Ukraine, he was quick to reassure them that "there [was] no actual starvation." There had been no "deaths from starvation," he soothed, merely "widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." So that was all right then.
But, unlike Khrushchev, Duranty, a Pulitzer Prize winner, no less, was keeping count — in the autumn of 1933 he is recorded as having told the British Embassy that ten million had died. ** "The Ukraine," he said, "had been bled white," remarkable words from the journalist who had, only days earlier, described talk of a famine as "a sheer absurdity," remarkable words from the journalist who, in a 1935 memoir had dismayingly little to say about one of history's greatest crimes. Writing about his two visits to the Ukraine in 1933, Duranty was content to describe how "the people looked healthier and more cheerful than [he] had expected, although they told grim tales of their sufferings in the past two years." As Duranty had explained (writing about his trip to the Ukraine in April that year), he "had no doubt that the solution to the agrarian problem had been found".
Well, at least he didn't refer to it as a "final" solution.
As the years passed, and the extent of the famine and the other, innumerable, brutalities of Stalin's long tyranny became increasingly difficult to deny, Duranty's reputation collapsed (I wrote about this on NRO a couple of years ago), but his Pulitzer Prize has endured.
Ah, that Pulitzer Prize. In his will old Joseph Pulitzer described what the prize was designed to achieve: " The encouragement of public service, public morals, American literature, and the advancement of education."
In 1932 the Pulitzer Board awarded Walter Duranty its prize. It's an achievement that the New York Times still celebrates. The gray lady is pleased to publish its storied Pulitzer roster in a full-page advertisement each year, and, clearly, it finds the name of Duranty as one that is still fit to print. His name is near the top of the list, an accident of chronology, but there it is, Duranty, Times man, denier of the Ukrainian genocide — proudly paraded for all to see. Interestingly, the list of prizewinners posted on the New York Times Company's website is more forthcoming: Against Duranty's name, it is noted that "other writers in the Times and elsewhere have discredited this coverage."
Understandably enough, Duranty's Pulitzer is an insult that has lost none of its power to appall. In a new initiative, Ukrainian groups have launched a fresh campaign designed to persuade the Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke the award to Duranty. The Pulitzer's nabobs do not appear to be impressed. A message dated April 29, 2003 from the board's administrator to one of the organizers of the Ukrainian campaign includes the following words:
The current Board is aware that complaints about the Duranty award have surfaced again. [The campaign's] submission…will be placed on file with others we have received. However, to date, the Board has not seen fit to reverse a previous Board's decision, made seventy years ago in a different era and under different circumstances.
A "different era," "different circumstances" — would that have been said, I wonder, about someone who had covered up Nazi savagery? But then, more relevantly, the Pulitzer's representative notes that Duranty's prize was awarded "for a specific set of stories in 1931," in other words, before the famine struck with its full, horrific, force. And there he has a point. The prize is designed to reward a specific piece of journalism — not a body of work. To strip Duranty of the prize on the grounds of his subsequent conduct, however disgusting it may have been, would be a retrospective change of the rules, behavior more typical of the old U.S.S.R. than today's U.S.A.
But what was that "specific set of stories?" Duranty won his prize " for [his] dispatches on Russia especially the working out of the Five Year Plan." They were, said the Pulitzer Board "marked by scholarship, profundity, impartiality, sound judgment and exceptional clarity…."
Really? As summarized by S. J. Taylor in her excellent — and appropriately titled — biography of Duranty, Stalin's Apologist, the statement with which Duranty accepted his prize gives some hint of the "sound judgment" contained in his dispatches.
""Despite present imperfections," he continued, he had come to realize there was something very good about the Soviets' "planned system of economy." And there was something more: Duranty had learned, he said, "to respect the Soviet leaders, especially Stalin, who [had grown] into a really great statesman.""
In truth, of course, this was simply nonsense, a distortion that, in some ways bore even less resemblance to reality than "Jimmy's World," the tale of an eight-year-old junkie that, briefly, won a Pulitzer for Janet Cooke of the Washington Post. Tragic "Jimmy" turned out not to exist. He was a concoction, a fiction, nothing more. The Post did the right thing — Cooke's prize was rapidly returned.
After 70 years the New York Times has yet to do the right thing. There is, naturally, always room for disagreement over how events are interpreted, particularly in an era of revolutionary change, but Duranty's writings clearly tipped over into propaganda, and, often, outright deception, a cynical sugarcoating of the squalor of a system in which he almost certainly didn't believe. His motivation seems to have been purely opportunistic, access to the Moscow "story" for the Times and the well-paid lifestyle and the fame ("the Great Duranty" was, some said, the best-known journalist in the world) that this brought. Too much criticism of Stalin's rule and this privileged existence would end. Duranty's "Stalin" was a lie, not much more genuine than Janet Cooke's "Jimmy" and, as he well knew at the time, so too were the descriptions of the Soviet experiment that brought him that Pulitzer.
And if that is not enough to make the Pulitzer Board to reconsider withdrawing an award that disgraces both the name of Joseph Pulitzer and his prize, it is up to the New York Times to insist that it does so.
*From an account quoted in Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow.
** On another occasion (a dinner party, ironically) that autumn Duranty talked about seven million deaths.
http://www.nationalreview.com/stuttaford/stuttaford050703.asp
Do you want to provide us with a quote to support your claim?
Let me give you a better working assumption: in no case that I've seen so far, does the NY Times reporting or editorial comment from the 1939 period stray even in tone from the positions of the Roosevelt administration.
So, if you consider the Times reporting to be, in effect, Roosevelt press releases, I don't think you'll be very far wrong.
Now, notice at the end of the article it says that GERMANY had been supplying CHINA with about 2/3 of her military equipment, UNTIL GERMANY allied with JAPAN, and stopped supplying CHINA.
No doubt, Roosevelt was more than happy for American companies to pick up the military equipment business cast off by Germany. Indeed, FDR's concern over Japanese reactions just might have something to do with the final article about fortifying Guam.
Curious post, considering that Walter Duranty did not write any of these articles. You seem like a big hammer who can't find a nail, so you just pound away on bare boards! You must like the sounds of work, more than achieving any particular results, right?
Now, I'll tell you what I've said before: consider the NY Times reports to be Roosevelt administration press releases, and you won't be very far wrong.
Imho, and for what it's worth: one reason the Times didn't report accurately about Stalin's USSR was because that's the way FDR wanted it.
Unlike virtually every other European leader, including even Churchill, Roosevelt was never in doubt about who the main enemy would be, should another war break out. And he wanted to assure, when the time might come, as many allies as possible, including even Stalin.
No, I can't tell you how much of this was conscious thought in 1939, but that is the way things eventually worked out.
President Backs Fortifying Guam, second column, first full paragraph...
You idiot. Your article was about the freaking New York Slimes (with the traitorous dems) covering for our enemies way back when. Obviously the story of Walter Duranty needs to be included on such a thread. You know, "a little historical perspective" as your tagline promises. In this case, some historical perspective of the NY Slimes and the Rat dems who they defend. Seems you're incapable of putting two and two together. I'll avoid your threads in the future if I can help it.
BroJoeK (a little historical perspective...)
BroJoeK did not post this article. I did. If you can't be civil please take a hike. I have posted hundreds of articles from the New York Times over the last year. It would be tedious if every one of them turned into a diatribe against Duranty. The article is not about the Times, it is in the Times.
So what is your take on the situation in China in January 1939?
Yeah, BroJoeK was real "civil" saying the crap he did, right? As for who posted the article, it didn't really make a difference. I was responding to what BroJoeK wrote in his post to me.
I take it that you don't understand what Homer has been doing here, posting daily articles from 70 years ago?
From time to time, Homer's postings DO include articles from Walter Duranty, and whenever that happens, HUGE numbers of Freepers zero in their rhetorical weapons, and fire for effect on Duranty and the Times.
But you must be NEW to the anti-Duranty club, right? And you just can't hold your fire until there's an actual target in sight, can you?
A bad case of premature expostulation, eh?
By the way, you'll be happy to learn that I take a certain amount of pride in being called an "idiot" by obvious geniuses, such as yourself. ;-)
quoting:
"That the section of the bill relating to Guam will be opposed before the committee and subsequently on the floor of the House appears certain. The opposition will base its arguments on the ground that Guam is too near the shores of Japan to justify the proposed fortification by this country and that such a step might offend Japan and thereby imperil existing relations between that country and the United States."
Now you make me wonder if you really understand what's going on here? Remember, President Roosevelt was a Democrat internationalist, trying desperately to prepare an hugely unwilling nation for possible war.
His opposition were the Ron Paul / Pat Buchanan Republican isolationists of that day, lead by people like Senators Robert Taft of Ohio and Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan.
I've said before, I think the NY Times was just a mouthpiece of Roosevelt in those days, but even FDR at the height of his powers, had to contend with serious opposition from Republicans and some isolationist Democrats.
Surely, you don't BLAME the Times for mentioning REPUBLICANS once in a while, even when the Times studiously avoids saying their names! ;-)
Interesting post, but it’s about 6 years late. Was Duranty still reporting from Russia in ‘39?
Yes, apparently he was with the Slimes until 1940.
“Walter Duranty (1884–October 3, 1957) was a Liverpool-born British journalist who served as the New York Times Moscow bureau chief from 1922 through 1936. Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a set of stories written in 1931 on the Soviet Union. Duranty’s reporting has fallen into disrepute primarily because of his reports denying the famine in Ukraine. He has also been criticized for his favorable portrayals of Stalin and his uncritical coverage of Stalin’s show trials.”
“Duranty left Moscow in 1934. Later in that same year, he visited the White House in the company of Soviet Officials including Litvinov. He continued as a special correspondent for the New York Times through 1940.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty#Later_career
Sorry, I didn’t catch the “from Russia with love” part of your question. Apparently he was not reporting from there by 1936.
OK, in retrospect, I guess I shouldn’t have posted the piece here. It was just that the subject of the Slimes helping our nation’s enemies during the 30’s immediately brought to my mind that treasonous SOB. I simply meant to remind and/or inform anyone who wasn’t aware (and lots of people aren’t) what sort of other slimy things the NYT did at that time.
Sorry for the enormous disruption. BroJoeK had every right to respond like he did. I must have completely ruined his life by posting that piece here.
In light of that I would say it would be interesting to see what he is reporting on now (1939 being now of course). I wonder if we would find the same brand of bias in his non-Soviet reporting.
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