Those of you who've been around here since last October may remember when I mentioned that we should all start calling phony news reports Duranty Reports. I named the term after the New York Times reporter who spent a decade publishing Stalinist propaganda in their pages. Including regularly denying the reality of one of the greatest holocausts in world history: the Harvest of Sorrows in which between 5 and 10 million Ukranians were intentionally starved to death by Stalin (and by Stalin's henchman, Nikita Kruschev).
Duranty won a Pulitzer for those reports. To this day, the New York Times has never even acknowledged that Walter Duranty was a lying Stalinist, or repudiated his reports. Every year, they proudly list every reporter who's ever worked for the New York Times who's won a Pulitzer. Every year his name is on their list. The Pulitzer Committee has never addressed the issue either.
A campaign to get the Times and the Pulitzer committee to own up to the truth is being undertaken by Mark Pelech. I support it wholeheartedly and intend to send letters as recommended.
The New York Times has recently admitted to being completely and embarassingly wrong about important issues recently. Perhaps they'll notice this campaign too? We can only hope.
The New York Times, in recent years, seems to have acceeded to allowing The Washington Post to claim the title of America's best left-leaning newspaper. So is this just peeing into the wind? I guess we'll see.
One of the greatest crimes of human history is still unknown by too many people. The New York Times is continuing to play a role in allowing this crime to go unnoticed.
dean, you are right Duranty was a bum. I am glad you posted this since the Pulitzers are coming up after the Oscars. Americans also need history lessons since Americans have a rather weak understanding of history.
Dean,
I thought I was the only guy on your website who read obscure history books. But I can see from you comments that you've been hitting the pillow with some heavy stuff such as Alex de Jonge's political biography, "Stalin: the Making of the Soviet Union".
Walter Duranty's work as Stalin's New York Times mouthpiece at the height of the purposeful starvation of much of the population of the Ukrainian grainlands has never been explained, inasmuch as Duranty was not a communist and apparently lacked a political philosophy of any kind other than personal opportunism.
Stalin almost certainly was the greatest leader among the allies who broke the back of Nazi Germany, and his forced industrialization of Russia beginning in 1928 probably saved that country from German conquest and total destruction in 1941-1942. But not infrequently he treated his own people as if he were inhuman.
In any case, I wonder why anyone would want to honor Walter Duranty after all that has become known about him.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Dean, if Walter was not a true communist believer, then was he "bought" by Stalin's lavishing over him for a decade. Was Duranty possibly ignorant?
My website contains a short bibliography about Duranty. The book by Crowl is the shortest and most succinct. Duranty was among the first Western reporters allowed into the Soviet Union in the 1920s. He quickly learned that there were four career paths for foreign reporters in the Soviet Union.
1. Describe the situation truthfully and after a few articles be escorted to the border and told not to come back.
2. Smuggle truthful articles in your country's diplomatic pouch and publish them anonymously. Malcolm Muggeridge did this for a short time, only to be repudiated by his own newspaper, the Manchester Guardian, which sent a replacement who 'corrected' previous reports by Muggeridge and Gareth Jones.
3. Visit the Soviet Union for short periods and write truthfully when you left after each visit, until you were no longer welcome. This was what Gareth Jones did. For Jones's and Muggeridge's reports, see http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/soviet_articles.htm
4. Clip articles out of Pravda and Izvestia and disclaim all contradictory reports. This ensured a long stay in Moscow (12 years for Duranty). And, never, never, interview the man in the street or the peasant starving in the countryside, as Muggeridge and Jones did. Duranty had contempt for 'the masses' and made sweeping statements about Soviet citizens' sentiments based either on the party-line or fantasy.
Walter Duranty believed in one thing - Walter Duranty's rise to fame, no matter how misleading he had to be. Also, in the 1930s one had a large left-leaning segment in the Western press and among intellectuals who enjoyed their comforts and 'communist chic.' Sidney Webb, with his wife Beatrice one of Lenin's 'useful idiots' and Stalin's 'maggots,' accepted the title Baron Passfield in 1929.
And then there was the Pulitzer connection. In the 1920s Duranty shared an apartment in Moscow with Herbert Pulitzer, the favorite son of the founder of the Prizes. (See Duranty's autobiography, I Write as I Please, 1935) Perhaps Herbert influenced the Pulitzer Board's decision. The Pulitzer Board in 1932 consisted of the following:
Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, pallbearer at Joseph Pulitzer's funeral.
Kent Cooper, Associated Press
Julian Harris, Atlanta Constitution
Arthur M. Howe, formerly of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Frank R. Kent, Batimore Sun
Robert Lathan, Asheville N.C. Citizen and Times
Robert L. O'Brien, formerly of the Boston Herald
Rollo Ogden, The New York Times
Stuart Perry, Adrian (Mich.) Daily Telegraph
Joseph Pulitzer, St. Louis Post Dispatch, brother of Herbert
Ralph Pulitzer, formerly of the World, brother of Herbert
Walter Williams, President of the University of Missouri
Perhaps readers can add something about these persons' political leanings?
HOW CAN THE NEW YORK TIMES AFTER THE BLAIR AFFAIR EVEN THINK OF DEFENDING WALTER DURANTY. THE SIMPLE FACT IS THAT DURANTY WAS A FRAUD AND A LIAR. HE MUST BE STRIPPED OF THE PULITZER.
The New York Times has gotten into the habit of believing nobody but itself. Not withstanding the fact that proof has been offered about how "they themselves have been used" in furthering Stalin's Communist lies. Duranty might not have been the "puppet master", but he surely was one of the puppets, and as such lied to the Times and to its readers. If the NY Times does not NOW repudiate Duranty and take back Duranty's Pulitzer, it should be treated as a pariah in the publishing world and an ongoing accomplice in Duranty's lies of 70 years ago.
The New York Times motto "All the news thats fit to print" should be changed to "All the news that fits our socialist beliefs". This is the same newspaper that committed the same crime in their strong support for Fidel Castro. Its nothing new. Educate the young that this is not a newspaper but a pro Communist rag akin to Pravda and is best left unread.
Malcolm Muggeridge, a comtemporary of Duranty, referred to him as "Walter Obscuranty." How apt!
Journalism would be well served by the revocation of Duranty's Pulitzer Prize.