Pulitzer-winning Lies (from The New York Times)
The Weekly Standard ^ | 6/12/03 | Arnold Beichman
AT LONG LAST a Pulitzer Prize committee is looking into the possibility that the Pulitzer awarded to Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent whose dispatches covered up Stalin's infamies, might be revoked.
In order to assist in their researches, I am downloading here some of the lies contained in those dispatches, lies which the New York Times has never repudiated with the same splash as it accorded Jayson Blair's comparatively trivial lies:
"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
I would like to add another Duranty quote, not in his dispatches, which is reported in a memoir by Zara Witkin, a Los Angeles architect, who lived in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. ("An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia: The Memoirs of Zara Witkin, 1932-1934," University of California Press ). The memoirist describes an evening during which the Moscow correspondents were discussing how to get out the story about the Stalin-made Russian famine. To get around the censorship, the UP's Eugene Lyons was telephoning the dire news of the famine to his New York office but the was ordered to stop because it was antagonizing the Kremlin. Ralph Barnes, the New York Herald Tribune reporter, turned to Duranty and asked him what he was going to write. Duranty replied:
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.
And this was at a time when peasants in Ukraine were dying of starvation at the rate of 25,000 a day.
In his masterwork about Stalin's imposed famine on Ukraine, "Harvest of Sorrow," Robert Conquest has written:
As one of the best known correspondents in the world for one of the best known newspapers in the world, Mr. Duranty's denial that there was a famine was accepted as gospel. Thus Mr. Duranty gulled not only the readers of the New York Times but because of the newspaper's prestige, he influenced the thinking of countless thousands of other readers about the character of Josef Stalin and the Soviet regime. And he certainly influenced the newly-elected President Roosevelt to recognize the Soviet Union.
What is so awful about Duranty is that Times top brass suspected that Duranty was writing Stalinist propaganda, but did nothing.
How it resembles Vietnam - the same press, the same left working to undermine our efforts and claim some ludicrous "moral superiority" over our honorable military.
Imagine what a few hundred thousand reporters could do to change the world if they actually investigated the BAD GUYS for a change???
*Part I - Rambo and the Bogus War Heroes
* Part II - Welcome Home, Babykiller
* Part III - Will the Real Vietnam Vet Stand Up?
* Part VI - The VVA - The Vietnam Victims of America
Shame on You America-Hating Liberals
Front Page Magazine ^ | September 13, 2002 | Tony Parsons - England
ONE year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting - the mass murder of thousands, live on television.
As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol Pot's mountain of skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps.
An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on one thing - nobody deserves this fate.
Surely there could be consensus: the victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators truly evil.
But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America's comeuppance.
Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.
There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country - too loud, too rich, too full of themselves and so much happier than Europeans - but it has become an epidemic.
And it seems incredible to me. More than that, it turns my stomach.
America is this country's greatest friend and our staunchest ally. We are bonded to the US by culture, language and blood.
A little over half a century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well as their own. Have we forgotten so soon.
And exactly a year ago, thousands of ordinary men, women and children - not just Americans, but from dozens of countries - were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics. Are we so quick to betray them?
What touched the heart about those who died in the twin towers and on the planes was that we recognised them. Young fathers and mothers, somebody's son and somebody's daughter, husbands and wives. And children. Some unborn.
And these people brought it on themselves? And their nation is to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter?
These days you don't have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see America as the Great Satan.
The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world's only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission.
The truth is that America has behaved with enormous restraint since September 11.
Remember, remember.
Remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive. Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of burning skyscrapers.
Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive. Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one of the planes with her mum. Remember, remember - and realise that America has never retaliated for 9/11 in anything like the way it could have.
So a few al-Qaeda tourists got locked without a trial in Camp X-ray? Pass the Kleenex.
So some Afghan wedding receptions were shot up after they merrily fired their semi-automatics in a sky full of American planes? A shame, but maybe next time they should stick to confetti.
AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot. That it didn't is a sign of strength.
American voices are already being raised against attacking Iraq - that's what a democracy is for. How many in the Islamic world will have a minute's silence for the slaughtered innocents of 9/11? How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to say that the mass murder of 9/11 was an abomination?
When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the street. America watched all of that - and didn't push the button. We should thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in the world. I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war. Not a "war on terrorism". A real war.
The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening the gates of hell", if America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened the gates of hell like you wouldn't believe.
The US is the most militarily powerful nation that ever strode the face of the earth.
The campaign in Afghanistan may have been less than perfect and the planned war on Iraq may be misconceived.
But don't blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched countries. How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of one hand - assuming you haven't had any chopped off for minor shoplifting.
I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me Bush's poodle. But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be - rich, free, strong, open, optimistic.
Not ground down by the past, or religion, or some caste system. America is the best friend this country ever had and we should start remembering that.
Or do you really think the USA is the root of all evil? Tell it to the loved ones of the men and women who leaped to their death from the burning towers.
Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on one of the hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a collapsing skyscraper.
And tell it to the hundreds of young widows whose husbands worked for the New York Fire Department. To our shame, George Bush gets a worse press than Saddam Hussein.
Once we were told that Saddam gassed the Kurds, tortured his own people and set up rape-camps in Kuwait. Now we are told he likes Quality Street. Save me the orange centre, oh mighty one!
Remember, remember, September 11. One of the greatest atrocities in human history was committed against America.
No, do more than remember. Never forget.
There is nothing unusual about that. Walk into any auto dealers repair shop and you will find people that love cars. People enter professions that they like.
What is significant about a sports reporter and a news reporter is they are in an occupation that reports on their favorite subjects. ... Sports and Government. The auto mechanic is into cars... he is not into dealerships. The typical news reporter is into government.. not Radio, TV stations or Newspapers. They like government.
Can you imagine a significant number of sports reporters being in favor of less sports and fewer players? Can you imagine a sports reporter's reaction to down sizing sports? The same is true of most news reporters. They are government fans. They would like to be in the government and some of them have been. At heart they are government fans.
There is a second smaller category of reporters. They are mostly columnists or on air personalities. They got into it for the recognition. They wanted to be a radio or Tv star. They are not government fans. They are, to use an impolite term,... Hams.
It is worth noting that Rush Limbaugh spent many years as a Disk Jockey. Rush wanted to be number one on the Radio. It took politics to get him there. With this in mind it is not hard to understand how the media became liberal. It is not hard to see why the reporters hate someone who wants to downsize government. It is not hard to understand the media's animosity toward those you think government is best that governs least.
So when you look at a Dan Rather, Peter Jennings,Tom Brokaw, Larry King, and Wolf Blitzer understand what they first and foremost are government fans. Any person that is anti more government, is their enemy.
Understand the logic behind Fox's Roger Ailes choice of people he puts on the air. He puts people on the air from Geraldo to Greta who are not government fans. Yes they may be liberal when he gets them... but over time they trend to the right. He picks people who are into becoming TV stars...They are not government fans. And they will, in-spite of themselves, do all they can to please the audience and make it grow. Some, like Brit Hume, were raised in a government fan home.... but Brit is not one himself.
A staff full of Hams will find a way to garner audience... It is what drives them. Today garnering a large audience means trending to the right.
CNN and the others don't understand that the secret to radio and TV news success is finding Hams and letting them do news and news talk. Hams are far more profitable and popular than finding government fans and letting them do news. Fox is going to defeat CNN and all the rest until they stops staffing with government fans.