Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $10.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
October
27, 2003
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October
25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October
24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David
Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry
Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
October
27, 2003
Why
Stop with Duranty?
The
New York Times and the Pulitzer
By DAVID LINDORFF
The New York Times and the Pulitzer organization
are currently in high dudgeon over a 1932 Pulitzer prize awarded
to Times Russia correspondent Walter Duranty. The problem:
a report commissioned by the Times and authored by Columbia University's
20th Century Russia historian Mark Von Hagen, who has determined
that Duranty's articles from 1931 Russia were a "dull and
largely uncritical recitation of Soviet sources."
The Times, for its part, now says the
late Duranty's work was "some of the worst reporting to
appear" in that paper, and says it won't contest a possible
posthumous revocation of his award (though new executive editor
Bill Keller warns that revoking the prize seems a bit like the
Stalin regime's "airbrushing of history"). All this
belated condemnation of Duranty's work raises an interesting
question: given that the Times was hardly a Commie publication
in 1932, if his writing was so terrible, just what, exactly,
were the Times editors thinking when they read Duranty's reports
from Russia and ran them on the paper's front page, and when
they repeatedly renewed his foreign assignment contract?
Duranty's real sin, it seems, is that
he allegedly failed to report on the terrible Ukrainian famine
of 1932/33, which led to the deaths of millions and which was
in no small part caused, or significantly worsened in its impact
by the deliberate policies of Joseph Stalin (and which also,
more to the point, has now roused the ire of right-wing Ukrainian
exiles here in the U.S., the proximate reason for the attack
on Duranty's work). While no one is saying Duranty's 1930 articles,
which were the reason for his award, should have reported on
a famine that didn't occur until two years hence, his oeuvre
in its entirety is now being condemned as the work of a Soviet
apologist-- as propaganda, that is.
Propaganda, or course, has always been
a rather loaded term in modern American usage. It is, for most
people, defined as the untruthful and deceptive information broadcast
by Communists. It is not something that America or its allies
engage in. Oh sure, we know that American leaders sometimes "stretch
the truth" or put a "spin" on the facts, but when
is the last time you've heard lies from the White House (like,
for instance, Bush administration claims that things are going
well, or as planned, in Iraq), described in the American press
as "propaganda"?
Likewise, a reporter who is seen as too
credulous in reporting a story based upon government sources
in Cuba or Laos or China, or in the former Soviet Union, is guilty
of being a dupe of propaganda, or at least a poor journalist,
ala Duranty. But a reporter who credulously or even enthusiastically
passes along as informed truth the deceptions and lies of the
American government (or the Israeli government)? She or he is
simply reporting the facts, and being a good journalist.
How else to explain the awarding of a
Pulitzer Prize in 1981 to Shirley Christian, then of the Miami
Herald, for her execrable reporting on Central America and Chile?
Christian, both before 1981 and afterwards, was an assiduous
purveyor of the official Nixon/Kissinger/Reagan line on Latin
and Central America. In her reports, there was no such thing
as a popular rebellion against a fascist and criminal ruling
elite propped up by the CIA, nor was there such a thing as gross
violation of human rights and death squad murders by those U.S.-backed
fascist regimes. Rather there were democratic or would-be democratic
governments nobly trying to resist a Communist-led insurgency.
This was pure propaganda and dreadful reporting, but hasn't seemed
to bother the Pulitzer judges, or the Times, which hired Christian
after her award.
Nor is Christian alone. What about the
three (count 'em, three) Pulitzers that have been awarded to
the Times' Thomas Friedman, who has largely adhered to Washington's
pro-Israel policy line since well before his first award in 1983,
and who spent late 2002 and early 2003 pimping for the Bush Iraq
invasion campaign following his 2002 Pulitzer award. No, the
Pulitzer, widely hailed as American journalism's highest honor,
would have a considerably shorter winners list if credulous writing
and the shameless or lazy purveying of government propaganda
from all sources were grounds for disqualification or revocation
of awards, and poor Duranty, who isn't here to defend himself,
would not be the only winner to have his prize put in jeopardy.
Meanwhile, one really has to question
the motives of the Pulitzer Committee and the New York Times,
which, after all, hardly would have needed a Columbia history
professor to tell them if Duranty's journalism was as terrible
as it's now being described. What seems to really be behind this
effort is the pressure from right-wing Ukrainian political groups
in the U.S., which have made this a cause. At a time when the
Times and other American media organizations are being accused
by the Bush administration and many conservatives of being too
liberal, this kind of pressure can be embarrassing.
Indeed, it might be more appropriate,
if Duranty's reporting was all that god-awful, for the Pulitzer
Board to revoke the appointment of the Pulitzer journalism jury
panel that gave him his prize in the first place. Either they
were gross incompetents, or they were grossly negligent in their
appraisal of his application
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|