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Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Bruce Bartlett :: Townhall.com Columnist
The shame of the Times
by Bruce Bartlett
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The famine peaked in the summer of 1933, with some 4 million Ukrainians dying of starvation. Another 1 million died in Kazakhstan, and a million more elsewhere, for a total death toll of 6 million.

Getting back to Duranty, he knew perfectly well what was going on, but none of this was reflected in his reporting. For example, in March 1933 he reported, "There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation." In August of that year, he said, "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."

In a meeting with Duranty, another Western reporter asked him what he planned to write about the famine. "Nothing," Duranty replied. "What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant."

In recent years, several books have documented the famine and Duranty's role in covering it up. This led to calls for the New York Times to renounce his Pulitzer Prize. In 2003, the Times commissioned Columbia University historian Mark von Hagen to study the matter. He recommended that the prize should be rescinded, a recommendation rejected by the Times' management on the grounds that the decision is not theirs to make, but rather belongs to the Pulitzer Board, which has also declined to take back Duranty's prize.

Perhaps if the Times had renounced Duranty's Pulitzer, some of its critics today might have been more willing to cut it some slack on the terrorist financing story.
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About The Author

Bruce Bartlett is a former senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis of Dallas, Texas. Bartlett is a prolific author, having published over 900 articles in national publications, and prominent magazines and published four books, including Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action.

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Reply # 1
Date: Jul 9, 2006 - 1:32 PM EST
Death of the Condor...
In the 1975 movie, 3 Days of the Condor, Robert Redford played Joe Turner, a CIA agent code-named "Condor," whose job was to just "reads books." When everyone he worked with in his "section" is killed by a "rouge element" operating "inside" the CIA, Condor goes on the lamb--knowing that he's next in line to be killed. Turner/Condor soon uncovers an insidious CIA plot/coverup and in the final scene he confronts his CIA handler "Higgins," in front of the New York Times building.

Turner tells Higgins that, in order to protect himself, he's given the "story" to the NYTimes. Higgins groans and tells Turner that he doesn't know the damage he's done. However, in the final table-turning line, Higgins asks Turner this all-important question: "How do you know they'll publish it?" The question stops Condor dead in his tracks. The implication, of course, is that the CIA holds some kind of sway over the NYTimes and that Turner's "story" might be suppressed, for security reasons, by a compliant and, gasp!, patriotic NYTimes.

Given what we now know about the New York Times, its history, and its willingness to publish anything Pinch & Co. deem fit to print, regardless of the damage it does to our national security--and so long as it damages the Bush administration--it's safe to say that Hollywood's fictious "Higgins" was blowing smoke up Condor's you-know-what when he let him think that his "story" wouldn't be published.

Obviously, given the fact that in 1975 a Republican was in the Oval Office, there was no way the NYTimes wouldn't have published Turner's "story." But Hollywood wanted us to believe that the NYTimes might do the right thing, and not print a story damaging to the CIA.

Even back in 1975 we were being suckered by Hollywood into thinking that the NYTimes was something other than what it is--a despicable, arrogant, left-wing rag.

BTW, 3 Days of the Condor, the movie, had no resemblance to the original book, Six Days of the Condor, by James Grady. Like turning Islamic terrorists into Nazis, Hollywood "crafted" the "Condor" storyline to suit it's political agenda.

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Reply # 2
Date: Jul 7, 2006 - 3:29 PM EST
Sinister Thinking on the Left
Mr. Duranty's comments that "you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs" and "what are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant" reflect the sinister morality of the Left, which goes something like this: since the goal is an earthly utopia wherein all pain, suffering and unhappiness will be banished for all time for all of humanity, any human suffering created in the short term on segments of the human race, while lamentable, is justified in view of this larger goal and happier future. A frightening mentality that cannot be made public often enough!
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