N.Y. Times agrees 1932 Pulitzer Prize was not deserved

AJC ^ | 10/23/03 | Howard Kurtz

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

The executive editor of the New York Times said Wednesday that the paper has no objection if the Pulitzer Prize board wants to revoke an award granted to one of its reporters 71 years ago.

Stepping into a simmering controversy over whether Walter Duranty deserved the prize for his largely favorable reporting on Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, Bill Keller said the paper has notified the board that the Times considers Duranty's work "pretty dreadful ... It was a parroting of propaganda."

[Roscoe Karns]

Maureen...Dowd should be next.

[martin_fierro]

S C H A D E N F ... (oh, you know the drill)

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Fantastic!

[martin_fierro]

The executive editor of the New York Times said Wednesday that the paper has no objection if the Pulitzer Prize board wants to revoke an award granted to one of its reporters 71 years ago.

In other words, the NYT is bowing to the inevitable.

[smith288]

How does something this simple and clearcut take months of "ongoing review"??? Do they gather in a room 8 hours a day for months at a time wondering if the guy was a mouthpiece for Stalin?? Its pretty obvious...whats to review?

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

If the NYT wasn't a tool of the Stalinists for so many years, they would have long since returned this "award" (or not accepted it in the first place). The paper has been run by red-diaper New York Commie-sympathizers for as long as I can remember. The irony is that if Uncle Joe Stalin had won the Cold War (or any of his successors), people like the NYT management and owners would have been among the very first sent to the Gulag.

How stupid ARE these people?

[Izzy Dunne]

We have just completed a 71-year investigation, and we find that "his work was clearly not prizeworthy."

[Hoboken]

Absolutly nothing would have be done to rectify this travesty were it not for the internet and the efforts of a few hundred people who care about the truth. Thanks and congrats to all.

I found this form letter at http://duranty.pelechm.com/

The Board of the

Pulitzer Prizes

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board:

We urge you to revoke the Pulitzer Prize granted to Walter Duranty in 1932 for his articles in 1931 on conditions in the Soviet Union, particularly the implementation of the Five-Year Plan.

We urge this revocation for two reasons:

1. Duranty's dispatches from the Soviet Union as a full-time reporter for the New York Times from the early 1920s to 1934 and part-time till 1940 were repetitions of Soviet propaganda. Duranty covered up the excesses and crimes of the regime. The result was that large parts of the public in the West were misled about the true nature of the Soviet regime.

In June 1931, Duranty admitted to A.W. Klieforth of the US Embassy in Berlin that, "'in agreement with The New York Times and the Soviet authorities,'" his official dispatches always reflect the official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own'. (Cited in Leonard Leshuk, US Intelligence Perceptions of Soviet Power 1921-46. London, Frank Cass Publishers, 2003). Thus by the time that he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning articles on the Five-Year Plan he was writing as a propagandist for the Soviet Union.

2. Duranty followed his Pulitzer Prize with even more unethical and unprofessional conduct by mostly ignoring the Famine in Ukraine and the Caucasus in 1932 and then in 1933 actively denying it and denouncing reporters who mentioned it as liars. This denial covered up the Soviet genocide of several million people.

In brief, Duranty’s dispatches were a fraud, and Duranty actively denied genocide. The refusal of previous Boards to revoke Duranty’s Prize is extremely insulting and offensive to all the nationalities that suffered and died from Joseph Stalin’s crimes, which Duranty did his utmost to conceal. We urge the Board to show ethical and professional integrity and to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Famine of 1932-1933 by removing Walter Duranty from the ranks of those who have achieved "journalism's highest honor," as The New York Times has called the Pulitzer Prizes.

[Mr. Bird]

What Duranty did was mirrored by CNN (and others) sucking up to the Iraqis for the past 10 years.

[dix]

I have never been able to figure that one out either. Those fools would be the first to go.

[CatoRenasci]

Agreed, if the Slimes had any integrity, it would have returned the Duranty Pulitzer a dozen years ago, or more.

[eggman]

Bill Keller said the paper has notified the board that the Times considers Duranty's work "pretty dreadful ... It was a parroting of propaganda."

Not much has changed at the Times. Dreadful is an apt description of their work but they have been struggling recently to create original propaganda.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Wow!!