And The Walter Duranty Memorial Award Goes To...

The New York Times’ Roger Cohen, according to Jonathin Tobin, in Commentary:

In last week’s piece, Cohen argued that Iran was a nice place for Jews to live and that, by implication, those who worry about it acquiring nuclear weapons or backing terrorism are full of it. It was, as I previously wrote, straight out of the playbook of previous apologists for beastly regimes, such as those of the Nazis or the Soviets, who had gullible or ideologically sympathetic journalists flack for them. Cohen’s belief in the credibility of the few cowed mouthpieces of Iran’s once great Jewish community was a joke. So, too, was his personal plea that he had never been treated so nicely anywhere. Making the latter point was, as I wrote at the time, not merely wrong but unprofessional.

But sufficiently stung by the tidal wave of opinion about his piece, Cohen just couldn’t resist one more bite of this poisoned apple today. The result is just as lame as the first one with the added demerit of being a second helping. His defense was that analogies between Iran and Nazi Germany are absurd and that the notion of Iran being run by a “mad mullah” is a caricature. He argues that the country is a functioning democracy which should not be demonized.

Of course, no one said that Iran was the same thing as Nazi Germany, though if it acquires and uses a nuclear weapon on Israel as it has threatened to do, such analogies would cease being so far-fetched. But if anything is a caricature, it is Roger Cohen’s view of Iran. A democracy? How many candidates not approved by the ayatollahs can run for office? Exactly zero. For all of the words he spends defending himself, he never comes close to the truth about the regime, its support of terrorism, and its repression of religious minorities and political dissenters.

Tobin concludes:

Those who thought that the Walter Duranty school of New York Times journalism was dead (for those who don’t remember, Duranty was the Timesman who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting from Stalin’s Russia, claiming that there was no famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s and that the five-year plan was working just fine) were wrong. To see why, all you have to do is read the work of Roger Cohen. Duranty was a Stalinist dupe and a fraud but at least he, unlike Cohen who is the dupe of the ayatollahs, didn’t waste space whining about his critics.

Ronald Radosh adds, “Let’s continue bombarding Roger Cohen with answers. Obviously they are getting to him. Read his critics whose contributions I have linked to above. They have far the better case. And here’s a suggestion for The New York Times. You got rid of William Kristol. Why not follow up with Roger Cohen?”

For our recent video look at agenda-driven reporting on overseas events–including from Duranty himself–click here: