Duranty in the news, as New York Times deals with scandal (06/01/03)

Duranty in the news, as New York Times deals with scandal

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - The name of Walter Duranty, The New York Times' Moscow correspondent during the 1930s, has been in the news lately - and the publicity has not been positive for a venerable newspaper that currently finds itself in the midst of a scandal involving the work and ethics of its reporters.

From New York to Illinois, from Washington to Alberta, and points in between, correspondents and commentators have written about the international campaign to strip Duranty of his Pulitzer Prize. Several have cited the Duranty case in their reactions to the current scandal at The New York Times involving a young reporter named Jayson Blair, who fabricated and plagiarized numerous stories that were published in the paper.

Since the Blair case came to light, there have been revelations of other improprieties involving editorial staff members at The Times, including Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent Rick Bragg, who resigned on May 28.

Writing in The New Yorker on May 26, in the magazine's opening section called "The Talk of the Town," Hendrik Hertzberg comments on what he called "L'Affaire Blair."

"The Times lamented, in its special report that Blair's (and the Times's) 'widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.' Still, the harm to the common weal inflicted by Blair's banal lies amounted to rather less than, say, the harm done by the Pulitzer Prize-winning whitewash of Stalin's terror perpetrated by Walter Duranty, the paper's longtime Moscow correspondent ..."

In a sidebar to the cover story of its May 26 issue, headlined "Behind the Scandal at The New York Times: The Secret Life of Jayson Blair," Newsweek magazine also referred to Duranty. "The News NOT Fit to Print," noted: "Jayson Blair is not the first journalist to deceive readers - and he probably won't be the last. It's no wonder, then, that the profession is struggling with a credibility problem." The item then offers "A brief walk down the Hall of Shame."

Writer Karen Yourish includes Duranty on the list as follows: "Stalinist Stooge? 1930s: Walter Duranty, The New York Times Soviet correspondent, ignores the brutality of Stalin's regime, telling readers at one point that no one in Ukraine is starving when, in fact, millions were dying."

The Calgary Sun of May 20, published an article headlined "Stalin's apologist: New York Times scandal sparks memories of far worse."

Paul Jackson, associate editor at the newspaper, writes that what Duranty "did fully 70 years ago was convince most of the world that allegations claiming Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin engineered the mass starvation of as many as 12 million Ukrainian peasants and farmers was simply anti-communist propaganda."

"We now know this appalling crime of genocide - akin to the Nazi persecution of the Jews of Europe in Adolf Hitler's death camps - was true," he adds.

Mr. Jackson continues by noting that the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association has launched a campaign to have Duranty stripped of his Pulitzer Prize. At the same time, "The New York Times is now embroiled in yet another huge scandal of one of its staff members [Mr. Blair] plagiarizing and fabricating stories over a long period of time. ... In comparison to Duranty's betrayal, Blair is rather small fry. But what should anger all of us is that the lib-left New York Times is perhaps the most arrogant and egotistical daily newspaper in the U.S."

In conclusion, Mr. Jackson writes:

"For his falsifications, Jayson Blair has been banished from The New York Times, but Walter Duranty paid no penalty for his outrageous behavior. The Times and the Pulitzer Prize Committee still claim Duranty received his award for work before his sham reporting in the Soviet Union in 1932-1933. This is like suggesting an apologist for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime should still be honored for earlier endeavors.

"Ukrainians the world over deserve justice, and the Times should give them that justice by stripping Duranty of his Pulitzer Prize now. Right now."

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Other news media that recently have published information about the Duranty case include: National Review Online (commentary by contributing editor Andrew Stuttaford, May 7); Daily Chronicle of DeKalb County, Ill. (news story by staff writer Dan Campana, May 6); and The Kingston Whig-Standard, Kingston, Ontario (news story by Arthur Milnes, May 1); and The Washington Times (news story by Natalia A. Feduschak, March 29).

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