BRAMA, April 30, 2003, 9:00 am ET
Press Release
26 April 2003
The Pulitzer Prizes
Columbia University, 709 Journalism Building
2950 Broadway
New York, NY
USA 10027
Dear Pulitzer Prize Committee:
In just a few days from today's date, on May Day 2003, thousands of people from around the world will begin mailing postcards to your attention, petitioning for the posthumous revocation of the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence awarded to Walter Duranty of The New York Times.
As I am sure you know, Duranty was an apologist for the Soviet regime. He betrayed the most fundamental principle of journalism, which is reporting truthfully on what is witnessed. Before, during and after the politically engineered Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine he willingly served as a shill for the Soviets, simultaneously smearing the reputations of those who dared tell the truth. Duranty, quite simply, helped cover up what I call genocide. If my use of that term troubles you, feel free to refer to the Great Famine as a communist crime against humanity or even just mass murder. However one defines the famine and no matter how many millions were deliberately starved to death (that millions perished is something no serious scholar disputes), the fact remains that Duranty knew that a man-made famine was devastating Ukraine and adjacent lands and that he went out of his way to cover it up, so securing perks for himself.
Perhaps those who awarded Duranty the 1932 Pulitzer Prize did not know of Duranty’s duplicity. We now do. To try and dodge this issue by suggesting that his prize was given for what he wrote before the Great Famine is a sophistry, for Duranty was already serving Soviet interests by 1931, and would continue doing so for many years thereafter. That he may have been a clever crafter of words is irrelevant. Duranty prostituted his calling for personal gain and, as such, his continuing grasp on a Pulitzer Prize soils all Pulitzer Prizes.
We ask you to revoke Walter Duranty’s 1932 Pulitzer Prize for, as Malcolm Muggeridge famously observed, Duranty was “the greatest liar of any journalist I have ever met.”
Please let me know the results of the Committee’s review of this matter.
Yours truly,
Lubomyr Luciuk, PhD
Professor
22 Gretna Green
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
K7M 3J2
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