Walter Duranty
Walter Duranty (1884 – October 3, 1957) was a Liverpool-born, Anglo-American journalist who served as the Moscow Bureau Chief of The New York Times (1922–36). Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a series of stories on the Soviet Union. Duranty has been criticized for his denial of widespread famine, most particularly the Ukraine mass starvation (1932–33). Years later, there were calls to revoke his Pulitzer; even The New York Times acknowledged his articles constituted "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper." His reporting and motivations have been hotly debated, leading to calls to revoke his Pulitzer (which was for reporting unrelated to the later famine controversy). Duranty's reporting is faulted for being too uncritical of the Soviet regime, including having presented Soviet propaganda as legitimate reporting. Duranty's name has become for some synonymous with thinly veiled propaganda masquerading as news, in this case in support of Soviet communism.