EDITORIAL: Pulitzer Board wimps out (11/30/03)

EDITORIAL

Pulitzer Board wimps out

On November 21, the Pulitzer Prize Board, quite obviously, took the easy way out by deciding to let stand the 1932 prize awarded to Walter Duranty of The New York Times. Its members, you see, did not want to set a precedent that could upset the cronyism of that special world occupied by the news media. Needless to say, no details were given of just what sort of "study and deliberation" occurred during the six months cited by the board in its statement (see page 3). We were not told the findings of the special committee set up to review Duranty's work. We were not even told how many yeas or nays were registered. So much for the public's right to know; that only applies to adversaries of the news media - not to the news media themselves. The Pulitzer process is secret, so tightly controlled that it is doubtful any board member will tell what happened in the disposition of the Duranty case. (Do we dare to hope against hope? That perhaps there will be one person of conscience who will feel compelled to speak out?)

The board explained that a Pulitzer is not given for a correspondent's character, or for his body of work, but for "specific pieces entered in the competition." Need we remind our readers that the body of 13 Pulitzer-winning articles was examined by Prof. Mark von Hagen (along with other examples of Duranty's 1931 work) at the request of The New York Times and that the historian's conclusion was that Duranty's dispatches were disgraceful and a blot on the record of The Times?

The Pulitzer Board also stated that, although it found that Duranty's work, "measured by today's standards for foreign reporting, falls seriously short," "there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case." And what of the documents that quote Duranty himself telling a U.S. diplomat that "in agreement with The New York Times and the Soviet authorities" his dispatches always reflect the position of the Soviet regime? Isn't that convincing evidence?

And here's our favorite example of the board's equivocation: "Revoking a prize 71 years after it was awarded under different circumstances, when all principals are dead and unable to respond, would be a momentous step and therefore would have to rise to that threshold [clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception]." Really? And shouldn't one count among those principals the 10 million who died in the Famine that Duranty denied - including the 150,000 who died in 1931 (yes, 1931 - Pulitzer Board, please note) as a result of Stalin's collectivization policies? Were they ever given a chance to speak out? Anyone familiar with Duranty's work knows that they were the subjects of his infamous line: "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." They were the price that had to be paid for Stalin's "successes" as chronicled by Duranty.

Not being privy to the Pulitzer Board's thinking, we cannot say where we go from here to get the board to acknowledge what so many others know: that Duranty was a fraud - he was a fraud in 1932-1933, and he was a fraud in 1931. He is undeserving of the Pulitzer Prize for 1931, or for any year, because he was a toady, a sycophant, an apologist for Stalin and his regime - a regime that began its genocidal campaign in Ukraine in 1929 with dekurkulization and collectivization.

As for The New York Times, perhaps there still is some hope. The Times still can act like the newspaper of record it claims to be, like the newspaper that carries "All the news that's fit to print." It is in the Times' power to finally tell the complete story of Walter Duranty and how he duped his editors (at least at first), his readers, his nation and the world. The Times owes this to the public and to the international community. It owes it to the 10 million who perished in the Famine-Genocide.

The only question is: Will the Times' hubris - and that all-important tally of Pulitzer Prizes - allow it to do the right thing?

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