The Pulitzer Prize for Utter Failures in Journalism

By Becket Adams

Sunday, May 21, 2023

 

The New York Times and the Washington Post are among the obvious losers in the Trump–Russia collusion hoax, as the report by special counsel John H. Durham, released last week, makes clear.

 

But don’t forget the Pulitzer Prize Board, which has earned a special shame in this mess. It was this organization that in 2018 awarded a joint Pulitzer to the two papers for their coverage of what ended up being an election-year deception. That neither the Times nor the Post has offered to return the undeserved award only discredits them further. That the Pulitzer committee hasn’t demanded their return is similarly damning.

 

As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy noted in his analysis of the report’s key takeaways, “Among the most troubling conclusions in special counsel John Durham’s Russiagate report is that the FBI — even as it relied on Clinton-campaign-funded opposition research against Donald Trump that it failed to verify — ignored strongly supported intelligence that Hillary Clinton was intentionally smearing Trump as a Putin puppet.”

 

There’s no other conclusion to be drawn, McCarthy adds, than that “the FBI, and the Obama administration more broadly, did not ignore the intelligence about Clinton’s strategy but rather that the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of the United States government knowingly abetted Clinton’s implementation of the strategy.”

 

In other words, the story for which the New York Times and the Washington Post were awarded one of journalism’s highest honors was actually a politically concocted lie. A politically concocted lie abetted by operators at the highest levels of power within the federal government.

 

It’s not a partisan thing to say that this is a serious scandal for both the media and the federal government.

 

Indeed, for the federal government, the scandal is the grotesque comingling of Democratic interests and the full might and power of the federal law-enforcement apparatus. For the media, the scandal is they missed the scandal. The “scandal” the Washington Post and the New York Times covered with breathless anticipation, the one for which they received accolades, simply did not exist. The real scandal? Escaped them entirely.

 

So, where are the Pulitzer-bedecked New York Times and Washington Post on the Durham development? Surely they are equally interested in the underlying facts of how the Russiagate narrative came into being? What does the follow-up coverage look like?

 

Here’s a New York Times headline published this week following the release of the Durham report: “After Years of Political Hype, the Durham Inquiry Failed to Deliver.” Its subhead reads, “A dysfunctional investigation led by a Trump-era special counsel illustrates a dilemma about prosecutorial independence and accountability in politically sensitive matters.”

 

The “Trump-era special counsel” is a nice touch, as if to suggest the “dysfunctional investigation” is little more than a politically motivated, ahem, “witch hunt.” Also, the irony of the New York Times yawning at a supposed nonstory “after years of political hype” is a bit rich coming from the recipient of the 2018 Pulitzer for Trump–Russia coverage.

 

As for the Washington Post, it published a headline that reads, “Durham’s probe ends as it began: Pointing at trees to obscure the forest.”

 

Let’s rewind a bit, back to when the Pulitzer committee announced the papers’ shared award for their “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.” Here’s what we know today: There simply was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow to steal the 2016 election. Not even special counsel Robert Mueller and his 40 agents, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, and 500 witness interviews could uncover proof of any such conspiracy. This is because the Kremlin connection was a fabrication, an invention of the Clinton campaign.

 

The New York Times and the Washington Post, by reputation the nation’s two most important papers, wasted an enormous amount of effort not just on chasing a hoax but on chasing a deliberate lie — a lie that was abetted by federal law-enforcement officials, all of which amounted to an actual and serious political conspiracy. And the fact that the 2018 Pulitzer winners didn’t break the actual story of how federal officials midwifed a Clinton campaign lie is in and of itself a scandal. Indeed, what we now know about the origins of the Russia collusion story and the way federal officials responded we know thanks to the investigative efforts of officials appointed to the task by Attorney General William Barr. The shiny prize that the New York Times and the Washington Post share can’t hide their failures.

 

Are the editors and reporters of the Washington Post and the New York Times shying away from this story out of embarrassment? They may feel sheepish about the role they played in perpetuating an election-year falsehood. Fair enough, but an honorable institution would own up to the embarrassment, rather than wave it away, declaring, “There’s nothing to see here!” An honorable institution would return the award.

 

Similarly, if the Pulitzer Prize Board were honorable, it would concede the award is undeserved and demand its return. Because, really, for what reason should the Post and the Times share this honor? For their desperate efforts to chase a hoax? For their failure to uncover the actual scandal in the nation’s capital? For “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage” of “Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign”?

 

What “connections”?

 

We already knew the Russia story badly hurt the credibility of the New York Times and the Washington Post. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that the Pulitzer committee’s failure to acknowledge the truth by rescinding its 2018 award to these papers is another mark against an industry that’s already badly mistrusted.

 

Journalism’s highest honor has been dishonored. If the people who administer it can’t admit that the Russia hoax was, in fact, a low point for journalism, then where should the public place its trust?