Pulitzer Prize board begins review of Duranty's award (05/25/03)

Pulitzer Prize board begins review of Duranty's award

by Andrew Nynka

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - In response to an international campaign, The Pulitzer Prize Board has begun an "appropriate and serious review" of the award given to Walter Duranty of The New York Times, an administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes said on May 20.

The board's administrator said in a telephone interview that the review began as a result of the thousands of letters and e-mails the board received in early May. A confidential review by the 18-member Pulitzer Prize Board is intended to seriously consider all relevant information regarding Mr. Duranty's award, said Sig Gissler, administrator for the Pulitzer Prizes.

"There are no written procedures regarding prize revocation. There are no standards or precedents for revoking the prize. We look at what would be reasonable and analyze the factors that would have to be considered," Mr. Gissler said, referring to the fact that since the creation of the Pulitzer Prizes in 1917 the board has never revoked an award.

Complaints regarding a particular Pulitzer winner are not uncommon, Mr. Gissler said. However, he did say that in this case, the board received an unusually large number of letters and postcards.

The letters, postcards and e-mails the Pulitzer office received since the campaign began this spring have not yet been accurately counted, but Mr. Gissler did say that the number was in the thousands.

Most of the correspondence has come from the United States and Canada, Mr. Gissler said, although he did remember seeing return mailing addresses from England and Australia as well.

The campaign to posthumously strip Mr. Duranty of his award was initiated by Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, director of research for the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, as a way to call further attention to the 70th anniversary commemoration of the Great Famine of 1932-1933.

While the issue recently gained steam, Mr. Duranty's Pulitzer Prize has always been contentious within the Ukrainian community. Many are angered that The New York Times correspondent is still honored with one of journalism's most prestigious awards even though information shows he repeatedly lied to and knowingly misled his readers about the situation in Ukraine in order to curry favor with the Soviet regime then in power.

Mr. Gissler pointed out that the awards are given for a specific story or set of stories in the year prior to when the award is announced. In Mr. Duranty's case, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence for a series of dispatches that occurred in 1931 - a year before the Famine began.

According to the Pulitzer website, The New York Times correspondent won the award in 1932 for "his series of dispatches on Russia, especially the working out of the Five-Year Plan."

However, in a letter sent to Mr. Gissler on April 26, Dr. Luciuk wrote: "To try and dodge this issue by suggesting that his prize was given for what [Mr. Duranty] wrote before the Great Famine is a sophistry, for Duranty was already serving Soviet interests by 1931, and would continue doing so for many years thereafter. Duranty prostituted his calling for personal gain and, as such, his continuing grasp on a Pulitzer Prize soils all Pulitzer Prizes."

The campaign asked that the Pulitzer Prize Board revoke Mr. Duranty's prize for a series of knowingly erroneous reports he made from the former Soviet Union, including the Ukrainian countryside, while a famine was happening there.

The campaign - which was supported by the Association of Ukrainians of Great Britain, the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the Ukrainian American Justice Committee, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America and the Ukrainian World Congress - was meant to attract the Pulitzer Board's attention to the issue at a time when the board comes together to discuss candidates for the award.

Mr. Gissler did not say when such a review would be completed and would not speculate on whether there were any circumstances under which a Pulitzer would be revoked.

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