Russian journalists accuse NY Times of stealing stories that earned it Pulitzer
Prize – for second time
The New York Times has apparently stolen its Pulitzer Prize-winning stories
from Russian journalists – the same liberal anti-Putin reporters its
correspondents have lionized.
By Ben Norton
The New York Times has been accused for a second time of stealing major scoops
from Russian journalists. One of those stories won the Times a Pulitzer Prize
this May.
The journalists who have accused the Times of taking their work without credit
also happen to be the same liberal media crusaders against Vladimir Putin that
Western correspondents at the Times and other mainstream outlets have cast as
persecuted heroes.
The Pulitzer Prize Board is comprised of a who’s who of media aristocrats and
Ivy League bigwigs. Given the elite backgrounds of the judges, it is hardly a
surprise that they rewarded reporting reinforcing the narrative of the new US
Cold War against official enemies like Russia and China.
Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times correspondent who has since become a
critic of US foreign policy, noted that the three finalists in the Pulitzer
Prize in international reporting “were one story about how evil Russia is and
two about how evil China is. These choices encourage reporters to write stories
that reinforce rather than question Washington’s foreign-policy narrative.”
Stephen Kinzer
@stephenkinzer
The 3 finalists in the #PulitzerPrize2020 "international reporting" category
were one story about how evil #Russia is and two about how evil #China is.
These choices encourage reporters to write stories that reinforce rather than
question Washington's foreign-policy narative.
1,897
5:46 PM - May 5, 2020
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The finalists nominated in this category were Reuters and the New York Times
for two separate sets of stories.
The US newspaper of record ended up winning the 2020 award in international
reporting, for what the Pulitzer jury described as “a set of enthralling
stories, reported at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin’s
regime.”
The Times was nominated again as a finalist for what the jury called its
“gripping accounts that disclosed China’s top-secret efforts to repress
millions of Muslims through a system of labor camps, brutality and
surveillance.”
The staff of Reuters was selected as the third finalist for its reporting in
support of anti-China protesters in Hong Kong. (The photography staff of
Reuters ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography for
the same coverage.)
Among the five members of the Pulitzer jury who selected these finalists was
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the neoliberal magazine The Atlantic
and a former volunteer in the Israeli army who worked as a guard at a prison
camp where Palestinians who rose up in the First Intifada were interned.
Joining Goldberg on the jury was Susan Chira, a former New York Times editor.
Michael Schwirtz
✔
@mschwirtz
I’m proud and humbled to share a Pulitzer Prize with @ddknyt, @dionnesearcey,
as well as @malachybrowne and his visual investigation wizards for our
reporting on Russia’s shadow wars.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/business/media/pulitzer-prizes.html?smid=tw-share
…
The New York Times, Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica Win Pulitzers
The Pulitzer board makes The Times a winner in three categories. The Anchorage
Daily News and ProPublica take a major prize at a time when local journalism is
in crisis.
nytimes.com
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4:34 PM - May 4, 2020
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While this elite Pulitzer jury praised the New York Times for “at great risk,
exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin’s regime,” it is not exactly clear
what that “risk” is supposed to entail – because the major US newspaper appears
to have stolen at least part of its reporting from Russian journalists.
On May 4, journalist Roman Badanin published a Facebook post accusing the Times
of ripping off a story he had released months before without credit.
Badanin is the founder and editor-in-chief of the liberal anti-Putin news
website Proekt, known as The Project in English.
“I have no illusions about the real role of Russian journalism in the world,
but I have to note: the two The New York Times’s investigations, for which this
honored newspaper won the Pulitzer prize yesterday, repeat the findings of The
Project’s articles published a few months before,” Badanin wrote on Facebook.
“I would also like to note that the winners did not put a single link to the
English version of our article, even when, for example, 8 months after The
Project, they told about the activities of Eugene Prigozhin’s emissaries in
Madagascar,” he added.
Badanin linked to an article he published, both in Russian and English, back in
March 2019 titled “Master and Chef: How Evgeny Prigozhin led the Russian
offensive in Africa.” The story details how the businessman Evgenу Prigozhin,
who is sanctioned by the US government, has been promoting business
opportunities in Africa. The piece focuses specifically on Madagascar, where
Russia also has a military agreement.
This report is eerily similar to a report published by the New York Times eight
months later, in November, titled “How Russia Meddles Abroad for Profit: Cash,
Trolls and a Cult Leader.” This story, which was filed in Madagascar, does not
once link to or credit Proekt’s original reporting.
Another anti-Putin Russian news website, Meduza, published an article on May 7
drawing attention to these allegations, titled “‘Fuck the Pulitzer — I just
want a hyperlink’: Russian journalists say ‘The New York Times’ should have
acknowledged their investigative work in the newspaper’s award-winning reports
about the Putin regime’s ‘predations.'”
Meduza interviewed Badanin, who said the New York Times “report about
Madagascar from November 2019 repeats all the main and even secondary
conclusions from our reporting about Madagascar and Africa generally between
March and April last year.”
While Badanin did not outright accuse the Times of plagiarism, he was
frustrated that “nowhere in the story did they acknowledge that we’d already
reported on this topic,” and said it was either a “professional issue” or an
“ethical problem.”
A New York Times spokesperson denied that Proekt’s reporting was used in any
way. And the Times reporter who authored this report from Madagascar, Michael
Schwirtz, responded dismissively to the accusations in a Twitter thread full of
sarcastic quips.
Another anti-Putin Russian activist accuses the New York Times of lifting his
reporting
Michael Schwirtz authored another New York Times article in December that was
cited by the Pulitzer jury for the 2020 prize. This piece, “How a Poisoning in
Bulgaria Exposed Russian Assassins in Europe,” is also suspiciously similar to
reporting published before by yet another anti-Putin website, called The
Insider.
The Insider is edited by the Western-backed, diehard anti-Putin activist Roman
Dobrokhotov. In response to Schwirtz’s Twitter thread, Dobrohotov angrily asked
why The Insider’s reports were not credited as well. Schwirtz denied having
used information from the previous stories.
Schwirtz’s Twitter thread tagged four Russian accounts: Proekt, The Insider,
Dobrokhotov, and Yasha Levine, the last of whom is an occasional contributor to
The Grayzone and the author of “Surveillance Valley.”
Levine reflected on the scandal writing, “Time to learn the hard truth: The New
York Times — like the Empire it represents — doesn’t give a fuck about you.
It’ll take whatever it wants, give nothing in return, and suffer no
consequences. And who’ll believe you Russians anyway?”
Yasha Levine
✔
@yashalevine
Time to learn the hard truth: The New York Times — like the Empire it
represents — doesn't give a fuck about you. It'll take whatever it wants, give
nothing in return, and suffer no consequences. And who'll believe you Russians
anyway? https://twitter.com/meduza_en/status/1258454119360192513 …
Meduza in English
✔
@meduza_en
The NYT times has been honored with a Pulitzer Prize for “exposing the
predations of Vladimir Putin’s regime” in 2019, but several top investigative
journalists in Russia say the U.S. newspaper ignored their groundbreaking work
in this area — again.
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/05/07/fuck-the-pulitzer-i-just-want-a-hyperlink
…
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1:58 PM - May 7, 2020
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“The reverence with which liberal Russian journalists have treated the New York
Times has always been baffling to me,” Levine continued. “But that’s what you
get when you’re a colonial subject like Russia. You fetishize the master. That
reverence is starting to wear off, but it’s still there.”
Yasha Levine
✔
@yashalevine
· May 7, 2020
Replying to @yashalevine
Most people here think we're a bunch mongoloids out to destroy western
civilization. Your complaints? Appeals to basic professional decency and
courtesy? Sounds like dangerous disinfo to me!
Yasha Levine
✔
@yashalevine
The reverence with which liberal Russian journalists have treated the New York
Times has always been baffling to me. But that's what you get when you're a
colonial subject like Russia. You fetishize the master. That reverence is
starting to wear off, but it's still there.
28
2:02 PM - May 7, 2020
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See Yasha Levine's other Tweets
New York Times was also accused of stealing Russian journalists’ reporting back
in 2017
This is not even the first time that the US newspaper of record has been
accused of stealing reporting from Russian journalists.
Back in 2017, the New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize in international
reporting for its reports on “Vladimir Putin’s efforts to project Russia’s
power abroad.”
At the time, journalists from the anti-Putin website Meduza accused the Times
of ripping off their reporting. The website Global Voices highlighted the
controversy, in an article titled “Russian Journalists Say One of NYT’s
Pulitzer-Winning Stories Was Stolen.”
Meduza reported Daniil Turovsky accused New York Times Moscow correspondent
Andrew E. Kramer of lifting his reporting. Kramer actually took the time to
respond in a Facebook comment, acknowledging that his report was based on the
Russian journalist’s.
“Daniil, I spoke with you while preparing this article and explained that I
intended to follow in the footsteps of your fine work, that I would credit
Meduza, as I did, and thanked you for your help,” Kramer said.
This did not satisfy Meduza, which also reminded readers in its latest 2020
article that the Times had ripped off its 2017 reporting.
Meduza in English
✔
@meduza_en
The NYT times has been honored with a Pulitzer Prize for “exposing the
predations of Vladimir Putin’s regime” in 2019, but several top investigative
journalists in Russia say the U.S. newspaper ignored their groundbreaking work
in this area — again.
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/05/07/fuck-the-pulitzer-i-just-want-a-hyperlink
…
‘Fuck the Pulitzer — I just want a hyperlink’ Russian journalists say ‘The New
York Times’ should...
On May 4, 2020, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced the latest winners of the
most coveted award in journalism. The staff of The New York Times won prizes in
three different categories: international...
meduza.io
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The Grayzone has also experienced this kind of shameless journalistic
pickpocketing. In March 2019, the New York Times released a report
acknowledging that the so-called “humanitarian aid” convoy that the US
government tried to ram across the Venezuelan border in a February coup attempt
had been set on fire not by government forces, but rather Washington-backed
right-wing opposition hooligans.
At the time of this February 23 putsch attempt, the Times had initially joined
US politicians like Senator Marco Rubio and the majority of the corporate media
in blaming Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. But The Grayzone editor Max
Blumenthal, who was reporting in Venezuela, published a report showing that all
of the available evidence pointed to the opposition being responsible.
When the Times finally admitted this fact weeks later, it made no mention
whatsoever of Blumenthal’s reporting. Glenn Greenwald was the only high-profile
journalist to credit Blumenthal and The Grayzone.
New York Times had ironically heroized these Russian journalists before
stealing their reporting
Further compounding this staggering hypocrisy is the fact that the New York
Times has in fact published numerous articles lionizing these anti-Putin
Russian journalists, while simultaneously ripping off their work.
Proekt founder and editor Roman Badanin is not some kind of crypto pro-Kremlin
activist – far from it. He has spent years working within mainstream outlets,
and was previously the editor-in-chief of the decidedly anti-Putin Russian
edition of Forbes magazine
Badanin does friendly interviews with US-based neoconservative think tanks like
the Free Russia Foundation, a right-wing anti-Putin lobbying group that
appointed regime-changer Michael Weiss as its director for special
investigations.
In an interview conducted by Valeria Jegisman, a neoconservative anti-Russian
activist who worked as a spokesperson for the government of Estonia and now
works at the US government’s propaganda arm Voice of America, group accused the
Kremlin of spreading false information, claiming “Russia will continue its
disinformation tactics.”
Badanin also called for “the West” to “support independent media projects with
non-profit funding,” stating clearly: “I think that what the West can do is to
continue to support independent media in the most transparent and clear way,
and to stop being afraid of the million tricks that the Russian authorities
come up with to force the West to abandon these investments.”
The Russian journalist’s pro-Western perspective has been rewarded. Badanin was
honored by the European Press Prize, a program backed by Western governments
and the top corporate media outlets in Europe, particularly The Guardian and
Reuters.
Badanin was also given a Stanford John S. Knight international fellowship in
journalism. Stanford University has established itself as an outpost for
Russian pro-Western liberals, and its journalist fellowship program provides
institutional support for dissidents in countries targeted by Washington for
regime change.
Badanin’s extensive links to Western regime-change institutions should not come
as a surprise to the New York Times; it has in fact honored him in numerous
articles.
In 2017, the Times published an entire article framed around Badanin. Reporter
Jim Rutenberg explained, “I wanted to better understand President Trump’s
America… So I went to Russia.”
In Moscow, Rutenberg met with Badanin at the headquarters of the anti-Putin
station TV Rain, which he described as a “warehouse complex here, populated by
young people with beards, tattoos, piercings and colored hair. (Brooklyn
hipster imperialism knows no bounds.)”
While praising Badanin and TV Rain, the Times also noted that the channel
published a poll suggesting that the Soviet Union “should have abandoned
Leningrad to the Nazis to save lives.”
The Times even featured Badanin prominently in the header image of the story —
just two years before the same newspaper would go on to rip off his reporting.
ny times roman badanin russia
The New York Times also reported on Roman Badanin in 2016 and 2011. It is
abundantly clear the newspaper knew who he was.
The Gray Lady’s willingness to snatch Badanin’s reporting shows how little
respect newspapers like the New York Times actually have for the anti-Putin
journalists they claim to lionize. For the jet-setting correspondents of
Western corporate media outlets, liberal Russian reporters are just tools to
advance their own ambitions.