EDITORIAL: Shame on The Times (04/18/04)

EDITORIAL

Shame on The Times

It's that time of year again, when The New York Times indulges in some self-congratulating as it announces that its latest Pulitzer Prize winners have joined the ranks of the newspaper's previous winners from 1918 to the present day. "The New York Times and members of its staff have won 90 Pulitzer Prizes - far more than any other newspaper," the full-page advertisement boasted in the newspaper's April 11 issue.

Among the illustrious winners who were trotted out was none other than Walter Duranty. Yes, he did win the Pulitzer in 1932, and true, it wasn't revoked last year by the Pulitzer Prize Board, but there's a big "but." Having Duranty's name on that list - without so much as an asterisk - taints the awards won by such notable correspondents as Bill Keller, Thomas Friedman, John Noble Wilford, Harrison Salisbury, David Halberstam, Walter W. Smith, William Safire, Anne O'Hare McCormick and others.

The listing in the full-page came as a surprise to many who had seen a recent article which reported that the Duranty plaque located in The New York Times' "Pulitzer Alley" on the 14th floor of its headquarters was being "restored." According to Holly Yeager, writing in the April 4 issue of the Financial Times: "In Pulitzer Alley, one gold-framed plaque has been taken down for what The New York Times calls 'restoration.' It honors Walter Duranty, a 1932 winner. But, after a series of complaints, the citation will be amended, to note questions about his failure to cover the famine in the Soviet Union that year."

It seemed a hopeful sign of an acknowledgment that Duranty's 1932 prize "for his series of dispatches on Russia [sic], especially the working out of the Five-Year Plan," was, well, not entirely deserved. Perhaps here was yet another little step that The Times would take to correct the historical record on Duranty and his cover-up of the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine.

After all, on June 24, 1990, Karl A. Meyer of The Times, in a feature on its editorial page called "The Editorial Notebook," wrote about the infamous Moscow correspondent and acknowledged that what Duranty wrote from his post constituted "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper." (The item also noted that Duranty's misdeeds were detailed "Stalin's Apologist" by S.J. Taylor, a review of which appeared in the very same issue in The New York Times Book Review.)

Eleven years later, in the book "Written into History," which contains Pulitzer Prize reporting of the 20th century from The New York Times, it is noted that Duranty's prize for reporting from the USSR "has come under a cloud" and that it "ignored the reality of Stalin's mass murder." In the book's introduction, Anthony Lewis acknowledged that The Times "has a blot on its Pulitzer record," explaining, "In 1932 its Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, won for international reporting. But his work increasingly came to be seen as slanted toward the Soviet regime." That book also includes a listing of the Pulitzer winners of The New York Times. Duranty is listed, but with the parenthetical notation "Other writers in The Times and elsewhere have discredited this coverage." It is the same notation that appears after an asterisk under the photograph of Duranty on display in Pulitzer Alley.

So, why no asterisk in the full-page ad run last week? Was The Times emboldened to boast thanks to the Pulitzer Prize Board's white-washing of the Duranty legacy? Did The Times think no one would notice Duranty's name on a long list of Pulitzer winners?

We cannot answer those questions. However, we can state that it seems The Times has once again found it convenient to accept Duranty's line that the millions who died in Stalin's forced Famine are merely "victims on the march toward progress" - not worthy even of an asterisk.

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