Deadline for Duranty
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When the Pulitzer Prize board sits down today to consider the question of whether to revokethe honor it gave back in 1932 to the apologist for the Soviet Union, Walter Duranty, one of the notions likely to be advanced is the idea that a lot of correspondents — and editors — got it as wrong as Duranty did. This context is outlined in the adjacent columns by David Engerman of Brandeis, who is worried that with all the attention on the New York Times’s Moscow man under Stalin, a free pass might be given to others who missed the story of the famine and other horrors. They included not only other correspondents but also academic specialists. Duranty received his prize, Mr. Engerman suggests, not because he was innovative but because his ideas were in keeping with the times.
It will be illuminating to see how the Pulitzer board deals with this dimension of the debate. Is the Pulitzer Prize to stand for excellence in articulating the common wisdom? Duranty was certainly honored and feted during his day, and not only by the Pulitzer board and many of his colleagues. The administration of President Roosevelt listened to him. During 1932, when Roosevelt was running for president, one of the questions was whether to normalize relations with the Kremlin. Duranty traveled with Mr. Roosevelt, the Columbia Journalism Review notes. Duranty also traveled with the Soviet foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, on his journey to negotiate with the new administration in 1933. When America recognized the Russian regime, it celebrated Duranty along with Stalin, according to “Stalin’s Apologist,” by S.J. Taylor.
Or will the Pulitzer Prize stand for standing apart from the received wisdom, especially when the received wisdom turns out to be wrong? The key point for students of journalism of the period to remember is that there were correspondents who got it right. They included, Mr. Engerman notes, William Stoneman of the Chicago Daily News and Ralph Barnes of the New York Herald-Tribune. One of the newspapers that got it famously correct was the Jewish Daily Forward, the main Yiddish-language paper in New York. But, notes Mr. Engerman “none of these reports became a part of the broader public discussion.” No doubt the reporters who got it right will spend more years out of the limelight if the Pulitzer board lets stand its error of 1932.
