Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for New York Times articles written from Moscow in 1931. Subsequently, Duranty's reporting was challenged by anti-Stalinist groups who regarded Duranty as a tool for Stalinist propaganda. The Pulitzer committee investigated the allegations for six months and in the end decided not to revoke the award. Years later, the New York Times would conclude that Duranty's work was some of the worst reporting in the history of that newspaper. None of this prevented Look and other periodicals from continuing to rely on Duranty's accounts of life in the Soviet Union, certainly a significant contribution to the slow pace of public recognition of the unique features of totalitarian power.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 2539