From: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_excomm/20000704_xex_the_manchuri.shtml The Manchurian media Today's establishment press still shills for tyrants By I.J. Toby Westerman © 2000, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent from 1921 to 1934 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1932, ranks as one of the worst and most dangerous examples of sycophantry in journalism. His consistent whitewash of Soviet rule, including the man-made famine of 1932-33 -- in which as many as 10 million men, women and children died -- stands as a disgrace to journalism and all those calling themselves journalists. Malcolm Muggeridge, author, journalist and one-time socialist, was one of the few who were able to get into the famine-ravaged lands of the U.S.S.R. and report on what he saw. Later, Muggeridge described Duranty as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism." Duranty's misrepresentation of events -- and the contemporary response to them -- has a specific and immediate bearing upon how today's news is presented, manipulated or unreported. Unfortunately for the public, Duranty today has many spiritual descendants whose reporting is colored by ideology and/or self-interest. Delayed reaction Because of Duranty's manipulation of the news in order to placate Soviet authorities -- especially Josef Stalin -- rather than reveal the truth, the scope of horror wrought by the communists in the pre-war U.S.S.R. was not fully comprehended until many years later. As a result, the public could not really gauge what communism was capable of, and what kind of man Stalin actually was. Duranty's activities in the Soviet Union have been revealed in Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow," and in B.J. Taylor's "Stalin's Apologist." Further discussion of the 1932-33 famine is found in the appropriate chapter of "The Black Book of Communism." Though known, Duranty's falsification of the news has never drawn the deep-seated wrath that one might expect, despite the fact that his "reporting" made him complicit in the extermination of millions of people. Duranty, in effect, was an accomplice to mass murder, but his former employer, The New York Times, has expressed something in the order of mere embarrassment. Terror famine Stalin's man-made famine of 1932-33 is arguably the largest mass killing in human history, probably surpassing even Hitler's extermination campaigns, and extended in territory from the Ukraine to Kazakstan in Central Asia -- nearly 2,000 miles. The barbarity was enormous, but did not provoke Duranty to action. The "reason" behind the slaughter was the continuing struggle between the central government in Moscow and small farmers in various regions who resisted collectivization of the land. It was in those areas where resistance to collectivization was the strongest that the famine struck. An additional desired result of the famine was the destruction of Ukrainian nationalism. The great terror-famine had nothing to do with poor harvests or even an inadequate supply of food. Not only was there enough food, during the 1932-33 famine, the Soviet Union actually exported food. In reprisal to resistance to earlier attempts at collectivization, Stalin ordered that certain areas meet impossible quotas of grain and other foodstuffs. The central government took everything edible. Men and women were shot for eating produce from their own fields. The numbers of dead mounted as the process of extermination proceeded. The NKVD, predecessor to the better-known KGB, was in complete control of the regions affected. At will, roads could be blocked, villages isolated and, of course, individuals executed without trial or warning. Secrecy was vital. Though diplomats of various nations did learn of Stalin's war of extermination, there would be no threat to carrying the plan out as long as the general public outside the Soviet Union remained ignorant. The cover-up Publicity regarding the famine would have caused great damage to the image of the Soviet Union, its leader Josef Stalin and attempts to spread communist ideology. On the rare occasion that an accurate report on the famine was published in the press, reassurances quickly appeared countering the original report and diluting its effect. Of all those involved in famine disinformation, Duranty, as Moscow correspondent for the prestigious New York Times, proved one of the most useful. In 1932 Duranty wrote that there was no famine, nor "is there likely to be." He knew differently. In September 1933, Duranty detailed to British diplomats how many had died and where: The North Caucasus and Lower Volga had lost 3 million people in the past year; Ukraine lost 4 to 5 million, and the total, Duranty stated, could be as high as 10 million. The truth concerning the terror-famine was difficult to assess, but Duranty knew it. The NKVD had taken extreme measures to isolate and destroy as much evidence as possible of the famine. Afflicted villages, some losing as much as 100 percent of their population, were cut off from the rest of the world. Flags indicating an epidemic were flown and roads to the area were cut off. Secret trains were used that left for famine areas and then traveled to remote rail spurs. The contents were carefully guarded by the NKVD, but not even the best efforts of the secret police could forever hide the identity of the cargo -- the corpses of the dead piled indiscriminately for quick, anonymous, mass burial. An historical error Seventy years hence, The New York Times -- the outlet styling itself as the newspaper of record with the motto, "All the news that's fit to print" -- still lists Duranty among its Pulitzer Prize winners, despite its former Moscow correspondent's participation in covering up mass murder. The media watchdog group Accuracy in Media has sought for years to set the record straight regarding Duranty and his reporting. A.I.M. approached both the New York Times and the Pulitzer Prize administrator about this matter. The Times indicated that it would cooperate with the decision of the Pulitzer Prize administrator. In a letter now a year old, Reed Irvine, chairman of A.I.M., contacted Seymour Topping, the present administrator and also a former Times Moscow correspondent, requesting that he take action on the question of Duranty's award. In the letter, Irvine pointed out that Duranty received special favors from Stalin's government, including a car and a mistress, designed to ensure the correspondent's cooperation. Duranty did cooperate, and the truth about Stalin's policy of extermination remained hidden for years. Irvine questioned if the award would have been given to Duranty at all if the truth regarding Soviet influence upon the reporter had come to light. Stating that "Trust in journalists and the media is at a low ebb," Irvine challenged the Pulitzer Prize administrator to meet the same standard as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 1992 the Academy revoked a 1989 Grammy given to a musical group that later was found not actually to have sung its own lyrics. A.I.M.'s Roger Aronoff confirmed in a recent telephone conversation with WorldNet that to date no action has been taken on Irvine's request to Seymour. Beyond a "slap on the wrist" -- an oblique acknowledgment that the Times correspondent's Pulitzer has been challenged -- no other action has been taken in the Duranty case. Red-colored glasses The whole scenario just begs the question, Why not? In an era when the past crimes of the Nazis continue justly to elicit demands for punishment and retribution, why have the crimes of the Soviets, and the activities of those who cooperated with them, attracted so little attention in the establishment media -- the media of the Pulitzer Prize and The New York Times? Could it be because not much has changed since the days of Walter Duranty? Let's fast-forward from the '20s and '30s to the current era. In its Jan. 1, 1990 edition, Time magazine's Senior Editor Strobe Talbott explained why the newsweekly had selected as its "Man of the Decade" -- not Ronald Reagan, who had broken the back of the Soviet Union and brought down the Berlin Wall, but Mikhail Gorbachev. Wrote Talbott, "A new consensus is emerging that the Soviet threat is not what it used to be. The real point, however, is that it never was. The doves in the Great Debate of the past 40 years were right all along." The Soviet Union was never a threat to the United States? Gorbachev was a great leader? This analysis by Time's senior editor would take on tremendous significance during the Clinton administration, just a couple of years later. ... Editor's note: The article by WND contributing editor Toby Westerman is excerpted from the July cover story of WorldNet magazine. 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