The Inaugural Walter Duranty Award

For mendacity.

Walter Duranty – it will be recalled — was the New York Times’ Moscow correspondent in the 1920s and 1930s who whitewashed Joseph Stalin’s forced mass starvation of the Ukrainians (the Holodomor) and many other aspects of Soviet oppression.

The Duranty Award

Duranty was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his efforts.

Despite numerous attempts by Ukrainian organizations and others, the prize has never been revoked. 

Duranty’s photograph remains in its honored place on the New York Times’ wall along with the newspaper’s other Pulitzer winners.

The first annual Duranty Prize will be given for what our readers consider the most egregious example of dishonest reporting for the fiscal year 2011-2012 (July 1, 2011 – June 30, 2012).