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Walter Duranty

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Author

The Resume

    (May 25, 1884-October 3, 1957)
    Born in Liverpool, United Kingdom
    New York Times news reporter, most well-known for covering up communist brutality, particularly the forced mass-starvation in the Ukraine in the 1930's
    Winner of the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Reporting
    Authored; The Curious Lottery and Other Tales of Russian Justice, (1929) Red Economics, (1932) Duranty Reports Russia, (1934) I Write as I Please (1935) Europe - War or Peace? (1935) Solomon's Cat, (1937) One Life, One Kopeck (1937) Babies Without Tails, (1937 ) The Kremlin and the People (1941) USSR: The Story of Soviet Russia (1944) and in 1949; Stalin & Co: The Politburo, The Men Who Run Russia
    Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times 1922-1936

Why he might be annoying:

    To cover for Joseph Stalin, he refused to report wide-spread famine in the Ukraine and elsewhere in 1930's Soviet Union despite personal letters that showed he knew about it and referred to truthful reports of the genocide as 'exaggeration or malignant propaganda.'
    Years later the New York Times referred to his reports as 'some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.'
    Joseph Alsop said, 'Lying was Duranty's stock-in-trade' and Malcolm Muggeridge called Duranty, 'The greatest liar I ever knew.'
    Leftist rag, The Nation called his reports, 'The most enlightened, dispassionate dispatches from a great nation in the making which appeared in any newspaper in the world.'
    He described the Russian people incorrectly as 'Asiatic' and wrote that they accepted communism.
    A notorious womanizer, he smoked; drank, used drugs and attended orgies put on by Aleister Crowley.
    He had a huge ego.
    When confronted with incontrovertible evidence of the Ukraine famine and his knowledge of it, he shrugged it off with 'You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.'
    Attempts to revoke his Pulitzer Prize have gone nowhere.
    His books show a remarkable ignorance of economics, history, and simple facts.

Why he might not be annoying:

    In defense of the Pulitzer Prize Committee they have no mechanism in place to revoke anyone's Pulitzer Prize.
    Strictly speaking, Duranty's prize was for reporting from before the Ukraine famine started.
    He performed very capably and with great courage as a combat reporter during WWI.
    He lost his left leg to an accident and accompanying gangrene in 1924.
    Records show that the New York Times management knew Duranty was lying but let him get away with it because of their own leftist sympathies.
    He was an excellent dresser and quite cultured.
    He came from a middle-class family and graduated from Cambridge on an academic scholarship.
    He neither the first nor last Western reporter to provide cover for communism.
    He was probably a blast to hang out with.

Credit: tom_jeffords


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 138 Votes: 67.39% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 22 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 115 Votes: 62.61% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 16 Votes: 50.0% Annoying