NYT writer 'should be stripped of Pulitzer'

From the UK's Guardian Unlimited:

The New York Times has been told that the Pulitzer prize awarded to one of its correspondents in the Soviet Union 70 years ago should be rescinded because the journalist was not critical enough of Stalinism, it emerged yesterday. The recommendation came from the history professor hired by the paper in response to calls from Ukrainian-Americans for the prize to be revoked. Prof Mark von Hagen said of the reporter Walter Duranty: "He really was a kind of disgrace."

Duranty, one of the paper's correspondents in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, was awarded a 1932 Pulitzer prize, the premier award in American journalism, for his coverage of the area. He died in 1957. Discussion of his supposedly uncritical reporting surfaced as the cold war drew to a close in the 80s and early 90s and he was the subject of a critical biography, Stalin's Apologist, by SJ Taylor.

The Pulitzer board then held an inquiry to see whether his award should be revoked but decided to let it stand. Since then, Ukrainian-American groups have complained that Duranty did not properly report the famines of the period, in which millions of Ukrainians died. He once described reports of the famine as "mostly bunk". In response to the calls and a decision by the Pulitzer board to carry out another investigation, the paper asked Prof Von Hagen, of Columbia University, to make an independent assessment.

In a nine-page report, he concluded that "lack of balance and uncritical acceptance of the Soviet self-justification for its cruel and wasteful regime was a disservice to the American readers of the New York Times and the liberal values they subscribe to and to the historical experience of the peoples of the Russian and Soviet empires and their struggle for a better life". Prof Von Hagen said the prize should be revoked "for the greater honour and glory of the New York Times". Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the paper's publisher, said this week that the paper had frequently acknowledged that Duranty's reporting was deeply flawed. But he said rescinding the prize might be seen as similar to the "Stalinist practice to airbrush purged figures out of official records and histories" and would set a dangerous precedent for revisiting prize-winning stories written in different eras. The Pulitzer board has yet to make its decision. It has the power to rescind prizes when a journalist is shown to have deliberately falsified a story. Mr Sulzberger said the paper would respect

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1069818,00.html

H.L. Mencken said some nice things about Hitler at one point, too.

I think this is a staged fight, and the Rectal Right wants to get some Martyr Points, and claim the big bad Libbrul Press hates them.

--bkl

This shill for Stalin received his award for stories totally lacking in journalistic integrity. Revoke the prize.

But there's more to the story of Stalin's shill, as well. (I've read a lot of HLM's stuff, and he had become opposed to Hitler after Kristallnacht, if not before.)

The real purpose of the controversy is to earn the Right some Martyrdom Points. They don't really care about "winning" this one. In fact, they would expose their own journalists to so much revisionism if they won, that they probably want to lose quite badly.

They would also be open to the real charge that they had strongarmed the Pulitzer committee and estate, but the Right is cocky, and if they win, they will probably try to brazen it out by acting mortally offended at the lack of journalistic integrity, yadda yadda.

If they lose, they get to whine that the Libbrul Establishment Press is persecuting them. They also get to defend their own lack of journalistic ethics for all time.

There are a lot of other "can't-win/win" controversies the Right is into.

- Defending Nixon
- Defending the execution of the Rosenbergs
- Defending Joe McCarthy
- Flag burning (anti)
- Mandatory flag pledges with invocation of God
- Public displays of religion
- Exploitation of carefully-picked cases like the Terri Schiavo tragedy (the woman who has been comatose for over a decade, in Florida, where the husband and the parents have been fighting to remove, or replace, her feeding tube)
- Exploitation of any case of "reverse discrimination", epecially marginally "ironic" cases, to build the argument that Blacks are racists

If they lose, they win. They can't be blamed for anything other than quixotically following their consciences, but can harp on any of these "defeats" until the Sun blows up into a red giant and swallows the Earth whole, or until we kick the bastards out of power, whichever comes first.

--bkl

Yes the right will crow about the hit the Times takes over this, but it's a legitimate hit. The wisest thing the Times can do is lance the boil now, because it will only fester as long as it remains undealt with. This won't go away.

The Times received journalism's highest honor for a reporter who in essence was a Stalinist propagandist. Knowingly suppressing the truth of the USSR as it then was delegitimizes the award no matter who it may delight today.

The other concerns you mention just don't tie into this.

That is truly a stretch and a half! He may be having a serious case of 20/20 hindsight but the Director of Columbia University's Ukrainian Sudies is hardly right wing.

is why was Duranty briefing MI5 and the CIA giving an accurate picture of what was happening in the Soviet Union and then going on to write his garbage in the NY Times.

This is suggested in Robert Conquest's 'The Harvest of Sorrow'.

He was writing in the 1930s and the CIA was formed in 1947! Its predecessor, the OSS, was founded in 1942, after the famines were over.

You are quite right, some of my grasp of deails from memory can be a little off to put it mildly.

that any Fox writer will be brought undone in the future

Maybe a "Putzpuller Prize", but not a Pulitzer.

Another reason why it's a staged fight: you just can't "revoke" a prize. In this case, the Pulitzer estate would have to go along with it.

--bkl

... I think psothumously stripping such an award is unlikely to result in anything positive happening. I wonder if the committee could issue a statement something to the effect of "we have serious doubts that had the facts been known at the time that this Pullitzer would have been awarded", and leave it at that.

Put an asterix on it, as the reporting was indeed damned sloppy, to say the least, but leave the thing in place.

Otherwise, this will become an annual ritual for axe-grinders of all stripes.

From Disinfopedia, the encyclopedia of propaganda.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller has played a key role in promoting both U.S. wars against Iraq.

During the first U.S.-led war in the Persian Gulf, Miller co-wrote a book with Laurie Mylroie, titled Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf.

Miller and Mylroie have both been clients of Eleana Benador, whose PR firm has represented many leading pro-war figures that have appeared prominently on television and in other public venues. She has also worked closely and uncritically with Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, in developing her reports on Iraq. In a May 2003 e-mail message, Miller stated that Chalabi "has provided most of the front page exclusives on to our paper."

more here: http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Judith_Miller

See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=181057

I'm locking this thread. Interested DUers are welcome to continue discussing this in the referenced thread.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation,
TahitiNut - DU moderator