Award for "Russophobic fabrications": for which The New York Times awarded the Pulitser Prize

The Russian Embassy in the United States condemned the awarding of the New York Times by the Pulitser Prize for anti-Russian materials.

“The organizing committee of the award assumes great responsibility, highlighting in this way anti-Russian materials with statements that have been repeatedly refuted not only by official Russian officials, but also by life itself,” the Facebook page says.

On the eve of The New York Times, an award was awarded in the category of “International Journalism” for “a series of fascinating stories that reveal the predatory actions of the regime of Vladimir Putin, written with great risk,” as stated on the official website of the Pulitser Prize.

Representatives of the embassy added that “if there is allegedly a“ big risk ”in this, it’s only for the reputation” of the publication, and also expressed the opinion that the award-winning publications of The New York Times are “a wonderful collection of undiluted Russophobic fabrications that can to study as a guide to creating false facts. "

The usual anti-Russian propaganda, according to political analyst Alexander Asafov, is losing credibility, so the Pulitser Prize in this case acts as a confirmation of the correctness of propaganda materials, which indicates the devaluation of the prize itself.

“She is exchanging her reputation in order to confirm with genius the correctness of such materials,” Asafov said.

As the political scientist emphasized, the prize is awarded not to outstanding, but rather ordinary reports, which require additional third-party confirmation of their innocence.

In turn, the director of the Institute for Contemporary State Development, Dmitry Solonnikov, believes that there is no point in talking about the objectivity of this award, since “it is a presentation of the award based on old publications that are rising again. It’s pointless to write about it again, but you can give a prize. ”

Anti-Russian cycle

Among the articles that served as the occasion for the presentation of the Pulitser Prize, there is, for example, material entitled "The main secret Russian unit is trying to destabilize Europe, say security officials." It speaks of military unit No. 29155, which, according to the authors, is supposedly a kind of secret unit of Russian intelligence. The New York Times claims that this military unit is behind various events throughout Europe - from Skripal poisoning to an attempted coup in Montenegro. 

“The Kremlin believes that Russia is at war with the Western liberal world order, which they see as a threat to survival,” the author concludes.

Another note - “How Russia intervenes in the affairs of other countries for the sake of profit: bribery, trolls and the leader of the sect” - tells about some Russians who allegedly paid the youth of Madagascar to attend meetings in support of the president of the island.

“One person who worked for the campaign headquarters talked about bags of gold and precious stones dumped onto a bed in the room of one of the Russian agents,” says The New York Times.

Moreover, the article mentions that the Russians allegedly even hired the head of a cult foreshadowing the end of the world in order to split the opposition and lower its chances.

And in the article “Gems, Warlords, and Mercenaries: Russia's Tactics in the Central African Republic,” it is stated that, hoping to establish control over the diamond trade and unite the country, the Central African Republic government turned to a new partner - Russia. However, according to the author, some lawmakers fear that this is a dangerous deal, and Russian assistance can be expensive.

“In Europe and the USA, Russia uses hacker attacks, misinformation and other strategies to try to penetrate into Western democracies and destabilize them. But here, in the CAR, according to experts, the country seems to be pursuing a different goal: to affirm its global significance and reap the financial benefits, ”the publication says.

"Masterpiece disa"

Earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had already called for holding NYT accountable for spreading misinformation. In this way, she reacted to an article in which the outbreak of coronavirus in the United States was associated with a mythical campaign against American health care, allegedly supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

• Maria Zakharova
• RIA News
• © Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation

“The material“ Putin’s Long War Against American Science ”is a masterpiece of disinformation,” Zakharova wrote on Facebook.

Even before that, a representative of the Russian diplomatic department condemned NYT material “Russia prevented the evacuation of a sick US military attache from Moscow,” released on November 2, 2019. She refuted the information provided in the material and called the publication’s allegations “pure forgery”.

“The five minutes that failed The New York Times. For a fake, ”summed up Zakharova.

In addition, she criticized the publication’s material about the investigation into the attacks on Syrian hospitals and the alleged pressure exerted by Russia on its results. The representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that before starting the investigation, the authors of the article “should have known that the Internal Commission was not created by the UN Secretary General on August 1 to establish guilt,” but to “improve the criteria used by various UN agencies in the armed conflict zone civilian infrastructure. " NYT’s investigation is nothing more than “fake, insinuations, unfair work of journalists,” the diplomat added.

Pandemic Award

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Pulitzer Prize laureates 2020 were announced not as usual at the School of Journalism at Columbia University, but online. The names of the winners were announced by the representative of the organizing committee of the award Dana Kanedi.

“Ironically, the first Pulitser Prizes were awarded in June 1917, less than a year before the outbreak of Spanish flu,” she said. 

The Pulitzer Prize in the main category “For Public Service” was awarded to the Anchorage Daily News and the online publication ProPublica for a joint investigation of sexual violence in Alaska. Reuters won the News Photography nomination for covering Hong Kong protests in 2019.