The Importance of Honest Journalism

Today, the anniversary of the death of Joseph Stalin, is a good day to look back on one of the great liars of journalism, Stalin apologist Walter Duranty. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of about 20 million people. He built a system of gulags and forced collectivism. Walter Duranty minimized and outright lied about the deaths of millions of Stalin’s victims, enabling Stalin to continue without criticism from the rest of the world. There’s no evidence that any nation would have intervened, but we’ll never know what the response to the genocide would have been, because Duranty deliberately hid the facts. Here are a few quotes from an article by Arnold Beichman:

“There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be.” –New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1
“Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda.” –New York Times, August 23, 1933
“Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please. Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin’s program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding.” –New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6
“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” –New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18
“There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.” –New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13

And here’s one more from Beichman’s article, from a memoir by Zara Witkin, an American who lived in the Soviet Union at the time. One evening the Moscow correspondents were discussing how to get the story of Stalin’s engineered famine out in spite of oppressive government censorship, reporter Ralph Barnes asked Duranty what he was going to write. Duranty said,

Nothing. What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated.

For his reporting, Duranty won the Pulitzer. The New York Times takes a very mild view of his journalistic fraud, both apologizing for and excusing his crimes.

Duranty’s cabled dispatches had to pass Soviet censorship, and Stalin’s propaganda machine was powerful and omnipresent. Duranty’s analyses relied on official sources as his primary source of information, accounting for the most significant flaw in his coverage — his consistent underestimation of Stalin’s brutality. …

Taking Soviet propaganda at face value this way was completely misleading, as talking with ordinary Russians might have revealed even at the time. …

Even then, Duranty dismissed more diligent writers’ reports that people were starving. “Conditions are bad, but there is no famine,” he wrote in a dispatch from Moscow in March of 1933 describing the “mess” of collectivization. “But — to put it brutally — you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” …

The Pulitzer board has twice declined to withdraw the award, most recently in November 2003, finding “no clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception” in the 1931 reporting that won the prize (see Pulitzer Board statement), and The Times does not have the award in its possession.

Duranty’s acknowledgement of “a few million dead” shows that this was no simple misunderstanding. It was a cover-up. And he didn’t simply “dismiss more diligent writers’ reports.” He went out of his way to call them liars by calling their accurate reports “scare stories.” This was done deliberately and maliciously, as Duranty privately acknowledged that the reports he had denounced were correct.

Contradicting what he had written in the New York Times, on September 26, 1933 in a private conversation with British Diplomat William Strang, Duranty said, “it is quite possible that as many as 10 million people may have died directly or indirectly from lack of food in the Soviet Union during the past year.”

As for the New York Times, while they have chosen to superficially denounce Duranty, noting that the Pulitzer board declined to withdraw the award and that the award is not in their possession, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said “We respect and commend the Pulitzer board for its decision on this complex and sensitive issue.” Had he any integrity, instead of taking such a passive stance he would have denounced both the Pulitzer board and Duranty’s award.

The damage dishonest reporting can do ripples out for decades. Even when Stalin finally died in 1953, his crimes were not detailed by the New York Times, and today if you asked the average man on the street which dictator in history killed the most people, they would say Hitler, even though both Stalin and Mao eclipse him. Although it might seem inconsequential since all three men are dead, what little earthly justice there is to be had for their victims is in how their murderers are treated by history. Their crimes should not go unacknowledged, and we rely on reporters, the historians of the average Joe, to tell the truth.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Stop the ACLU, Is It Just Me?, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, Mark My Words, DragonLady’s World, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Rightlinx, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, The Uncooperative Blogger ®, stikNstein… has no mercy, The Right Nation, Overtaken by Events, Pirate’s Cove, Renaissance Blogger, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, Right Pundits, Random Dreamer, A Blog For All, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao’s Blog, Phastidio.net, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Allie Is Wired, Faultline USA, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, and Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.