Pulitzer Board declines to revoke Duranty's prize (11/30/03)

Pulitzer Board declines to revoke Duranty's prize

by Andrew Nynka

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - In response to an international campaign which asked that the 1932 Pulitzer Prize awarded to Walter Duranty of The New York Times be revoked, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced on November 21 that, "after more than six months of study and deliberation," it would not posthumously take away Mr. Duranty's award.

According to a statement issued by the Pulitzer Board that same day, the portfolio of 13 articles for which Mr. Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize, "measured by today's standards for foreign reporting, falls seriously short." The statement also said that the board's view in the matter "is similar to that of The New York Times itself and of some scholars who have examined [Duranty's] 1931 reports."

The New York Times recently characterized Mr. Duranty's work as "slovenly," and Dr. Mark von Hagen, a Columbia University history professor hired by The New York Times to examine Mr. Duranty's dispatches from the former Soviet Union, characterized Mr. Duranty's Pulitzer Prize-winning articles as "cynical in tone and apologist in purpose and effect in terms of justifying what the Stalinist regime was up to."

However, in explaining the decision not to revoke Mr. Duranty's award, the board said "there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case."

"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," the Pulitzer Board statement said.

The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which initiated the international campaign to have Mr. Duranty's Pulitzer Prize revoked or returned, responded to the Pulitzer decision in a statement issued on November 21.

According to that statement, Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, research director at the UCCLA, said: "It is a documented fact that Duranty was Stalin's apologist, a shill for the Soviets before, during and after 1932-1933. For the Pulitzer Prize Committee to render this tartuffish decision and announce it on the eve of the fourth Saturday in November, a day officially set aside in Ukraine for national mourning, is base."

The board has repeatedly stated that a Pulitzer Prize for reporting is awarded not for an author's body of work or for the author's character, but for the specific pieces entered into the competition. The board, therefore, said in its statement that it reviewed only the 13 articles that actually won the prize, articles written and published during 1931.

Dr. Luciuk said those 13 articles were "clearly nothing more than a regurgitation of the official Soviet line." Dr. Luciuk told The Weekly by telephone on November 25 that, in focusing only on the 13 articles, the Pulitzer Prize Board was "concentrating on minutiae and ignoring the greater truth. It's a sleight of hand."

In his statement, posted on the UCCLA website on Nov. 21, Dr. Luciuk said the Pulitzer Prize Board's decision not to revoke Mr. Duranty's prize tarnished what the prize is meant to represent. "All who hold a Pulitzer Prize should think about whether what was once the most prestigious distinction in journalism still is. Duranty's prize soils all Pulitzer Prizes."

The decision not to revoke Mr. Duranty's Pulitzer came during a semiannual meeting of the 17-member Pulitzer Prize Board, held at Columbia University's journalism building in New York City.

Sig Gissler, administrator for the Pulitzer Prizes, told The Weekly on November 24 that the Pulitzer Board voted not to revoke Mr. Duranty's award, but he would not say whether the vote was unanimous. Mr. Gissler explained that all proceedings of Pulitzer Prize Board meetings are confidential.

The statement from the Pulitzer Prize Board acknowledged that "the famine of 1932-1933 was horrific and has not received the international attention it deserves."

"By its decision, the board in no way wishes to diminish the gravity of that loss. The board extends its sympathy to Ukrainians and others in the United States and throughout the world who still mourn the suffering and deaths brought on by Joseph Stalin," the Pulitzer Board said.

Dr. Luciuk said the UCCLA "prayed the Pulitzer Prize Committee would do the decent thing and revoke Duranty's ill-gotten award on the 70th anniversary of the Terror-Famine. They were granted a unique chance to champion truth. Instead they have rallied around a liar and by so doing have further slighted the sufferings of millions of innocents. They will be remembered by history for what they have done today. As for Duranty, he will no doubt be pleased to be in their company."

The UCCLA said it still expects that The New York Times will return Mr. Duranty's Pulitzer Prize.

Pulitzer Prize Board's statement

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