ZGram - 6/16/2003 - "Rescinding Walter Durante's Pulitzer for lying through his teeth"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

June 16, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I was pleased to see this overdue Durante story being rolled up - 
finally!  It was sent to me by Dr. Robert Countess who followed up 
the main description with a letter of his own:

[START]

The following Letter to the TIMES is based on newspaper and TV 
coverage recently about the Jason Blair New York Times matter and its 
relation to Walter Duranty, who in the late 1920s to early 1930s was 
the NYT journalist in Moscow.

Just this past week, I saw a report on TV about thousands of 
Ukrainians who have sent postcard protests to both the NYT and to the 
Pullitzer Prize committee urging that the 1931 PP be rescinded from 
Duranty posthumously because of his covering up the Soviet induced 
famine in the Ukraine whereby some 6-8 million innocent Ukrainians 
died-largely due to their lack of willingness to see their farms 
stolen by the Communist Party and made into large cooperatives run by 
formerly free Ukrainians who then would become slaves or serfs, as it 
were, to the Party.

  A major source for the journalistic setting of the period is a book 
by Donald Day, authorized journalist for the Baltics, Poland, and the 
Soviet Union, from the Chicago Tribune, a  newspaper famous for its 
honest journalism and pro-American interests, in contrast to the New 
York Times with its obvious slant toward Socialism and Soviet 
experiment with totalitarian Marxism from 1917 to create "a workers' 
Paradise."

  In 1920 Donald Day was invited by the Soviet representative in New 
York to visit Russia and report on events there, but when Day arrived 
in Riga, Latvia, he was refused a visa by the communist government. 
He waited some 20 years for a visa, but when the Soviets invaded 
Latvia in July 1940, he was given 24 hours to leave the country.  All 
the while Day was NOT allowed into the USSR, there were journalists 
such as Walter Duranty who covered up Bolshevist atrocities and gave 
positive spins that were duly printed in the NYT.

  On page 48 of his book, he reproduces a letter to his Publisher, 
Colonel R.R. McCormick [Chicago Tribune] in which he describes an 
invitation in 1926 from a Soviet official.  In short, the official 
made clear that if Day were to display "loyalnosty" [Russian for 
loyalty], meaning "objectivity" to place a positive spin on events 
and not report negatives, he would be allowed a visa.  Day replied to 
the official that he had a loyalty foremost to his newspaper and 
could only report what he observed.  The Soviet official told him "to 
think it over."

    Day writes on page 126 that "For 18 years Moscow's star reporter 
was Walter Duranty, an Englishman employed by The New York Times, a 
newspaper owned by Jews. [Day pointed out this ethnic ownership in 
view of the 80% dominance of the Soviet Communist leadership by 
ethnic Jews and the NYT spin on the Bolshevist Revolution as a 
positive development from the Christian Czar and his regime.] 
 Duranty became the apologist and advocate for the Soviet government. 
He was afforded many privileges by his communist friends. For many 
years Walter occasionally included in his messages to The Times 
denunciations of 'The White Guard Colonels who were spreading lies 
about the Soviets from Riga.'"   When Day met Duranty at the Hotel 
Adlon in Berlin on one occasion, Day asked Duranty about these 
denunciations and Duranty replied: "Donald, you have no idea how nice 
the Soviet authorities are to me after I sent out a message 
denouncing the White Guard Colonels in Riga."

    Then on the same page Day writes: "Duranty, Lyons and Chamberlain 
 (Christian Science Monitor) all made a special point of denouncing 
me and my reports of the great famine in the Ukraine in 1934 when 
some five million people died of starvation. Lyons, after his 
reformation, estimated the victims at between seven and fifteen 
million. The Soviet government contended that there was no famine at 
all. Duranty was permitted to make a trip to the Ukraine and send a 
number of dispatches, one from Odessa, giving an absolutely false 
picture of conditions. Later he told a gathering in my presence how 
in Odessa he had seen a woman drop a bottle of milk, which broke on 
the pavement, and how a man had flung himself on his knees and lapped 
up the milk from the street with his tongue like a famished animal. 
In books written after they had left Russia, both Lyons and 
Chamberlain admitted it was they who had done the lying and they 
confirmed the [Chicago] Tribune's famine reports." [From Donald Day: 
1920-1942: Propaganda, Censorship and One Man's Struggle to herald 
the Truth.  (Day died in 1966)]

   I include this lengthy excerpt since it is so important to placing 
the lying, distorting, spinning Duranty in the context of his day and 
in the present era of the many "Jason Blairs" that graduate from 
schools of journalism [even though Blair was a drop-out hired by the 
NYT anyway, that is, without the normally required degree].

  With this brief context, one can easily see that Walter Duranty's 
dishonesty about the Ukraine famine makes Jason Blair's dishonesty 
look like child's play.  For the seriousness of the Soviet induced 
murder [no better word for it except perhaps for GENOCIDE], Duranty 
deserves to have the Pullitzer rescinded, in my view and in the view 
of millions of Ukrainians and others who have suffered so dearly due 
to journalistic dishonesty.

  A more recent analogy is the Israeli terror attack on the USS 
Liberty on June 9, 1967 and the killing of 34 US sailors and 
officers, wounding some 130+ in addition.  The continued cover up of 
this terror attack as an "accident" is pregnant, for example, a week 
ago when the Huntsville Times carried NO article memorializing this 
event at all.

  Journalism that tells the truth--what one might call "exactitude" as 
the French call it-is the sort of journalism foreign to the Walter 
Duranty and Jason Blair types of this world.

  Thus, with all this in view, I submit the following letter, 
believing full well that the Editor will disallow it from being 
published.

Dear Letters:

  My name is not "Jason Blair," nor is it "Walter Duranty."

If it were either, I would go to court and seek to have it changed 
legally to an honorable name.
  Both of these New York Times reporters have shown themselves to be 
dishonest and willing to hide facts or invent facts to further their 
careers.

  I care not to spend another moment on Jason Blair, the college drop 
out from Maryland College Park campus.

  But Duranty is another story.

  Huge numbers of Ukrainians in recent days are sending protest 
postcards to both the Pullitzer Prize committee and to the New York 
Times to urge the rescinding of the 1931 Pullitzer Prize to Duranty. 
 Reason? Millions of innocent Ukrainians died in the artificially 
induced famine holocaust and Duranty knew that it was caused by the 
Communist Party, but he refused to tell the truth to his New York 
Times readers.

  I have been a Visiting Professor in the Ukraine twice and plan to 
return. I have stayed in Kiev and Odessa and traveled widely in that 
rich bread basket with its thick and fertile black soil.

  Duranty's cover up and lies cannot be excused, even though 
withdrawing the Prize will not bring back the estimated 15,000,000 
holocausted by the Communists.  But, rescinding the Prize will be a 
move in the right direction.


  --
Robert H. Countess, Ph.D.
Ancient Greek
email: boblbpinc at earthlink.net
28755 Sagewood Circle
Toney, AL 35773  USA
Phone: (256) 232-4940  Cell: (256) 653-7598
Fax:  (256) 232-4940

[END]