The 1619 Project: A Pulitzer Prize goes to a New York Times author who knowingly published lies

 Nikole Hannah-Jones, CNN, and MSNBC: the Walter Duranty of our time. TD

Andrea Widburg  "In August 2019, the New York Times debuted the 1619 Project, the brainchild of , a Times staff writer.  The premise was that 1619 marked the year in which the first African slaves came to America, permanently corrupting America's founding.

"The 1619 Project was condemned for serious historical inaccuracies.*  In her inaugural article — "Our democracy's founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true" — Hannah-Jones gave readers a foretaste of the errors that would follow in subsequent articles.  Nevertheless, the Pulitzer committee awarded her its commentary award.

"Most strikingly, Hannah-Jones originally wrote that Americans fought their revolution to preserve slavery, making the whole idea of American liberty a cynical cover for immoral greed:

One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies, which had produced tremendous wealth. At the time there were growing calls to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, which would have badly damaged the economies of colonies in both North and South.

"There are two problems with the quoted passage.  The first is that it is historically inaccurate.  The second is that Hannah-Jones knew or should have known that it was incorrect.

. . . Read the full article here

"One should always remember that, in 1932, the Pulitzer committee gave one of its coveted awards to Walter Duranty, another New York Times writer, for his articles about the Soviet Union.  In those articles, Duranty followed the Soviet party line, covering up USSR's open tyranny.

"Duranty continued to cover for the Soviet government in post-award reports denying that there was a devastating famine in the USSR.  This naturally covered up the fact that the Soviet government created the famine, partly through government planning and partly to destroy Ukrainian farmers, who were resistant to collectivism.

"Even the Times conceded that Duranty's articles were "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper."  We can now add Hannah-Jones's award-winning piece to that list.

Heritage: Pulitzer Overlooks Egregious Errors to Award Prize to New York Times’ Fatally Flawed "1619 Project"  . . . "In this case, the Pulitzer will help The New York Times face down the discovery that the 1619 Project—and not just Hannah-Jones’ lead essay—is riddled with mistakes and exaggerations."...

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