The New York Times has won another Walter Duranty Pulitzer Prize, it seems. Duranty, you may recall, was the NYT Moscow bureau chief during the early Stalin years who reported that Communism was working in Soviet Russia, and that all those rumors about intentional starvation and purges were just the fabrications of counter-revolutionaries. For this, he won a Pulitzer.
History has judged Duranty, and it ain’t pretty. The same can now be said for the 2010 Pulitzer won by NTY reporter David Barstow:
An April 20, 2008 New York Times story by David Barstow, “MESSAGE MACHINE: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” won a Pulitzer Prize for the explosive claim that the Pentagon had cultivated “military analysts” in a “trojan horse” campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay.
On December 1 of this year, the Washington Times reported that an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general, spurred by Barstow’s reporting, found no wrongdoing, and quoted a spokesman for former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying the New York Times should return its Pulitzer. But the New York Times itself did not report the Pentagon’s vindication until Christmas Day, on page A20.
My question is, how is it that a story as routine as this one, which, even if it were accurate, is just an assertion that a few calls were made to enlist support after the worst attack ever on our country, is worthy of a Pulitzer?
That pretty much says all you need to know about print journalism today. If Ben Franklin were alive today he’d probably ask that his likeness be stricken from the Pulitzer medal.
