Not only did the New York Times miss the mark in its early characterization of Adolf Hitler, questioning the "sincerity" of his anti-Semitism in 1922 and claiming he had been "tamed" by a prison term two years later, the Old Gray Lady also badly missed the target of truth on another of the world's worst dictators.

One of the Times's most famous reporters was Walter Duranty, whose coverage in 1931-33 from the Soviet Union won all kinds of accolades, including the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for foreign reporting.

As documented by historian Robert Conquest in his landmark 1986 book "The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine," Duranty had become a propaganda agent and apologist for one of history's most evil despots, Josef Stalin.

While it is a well-known fact that as many as 12 to 14 million peasants were deliberately starved to death or otherwise murdered during Stalin's forced collectivization program, the readers of the early 1930s would never have known it by reading the dispatches filed by Duranty.

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In November 1932, Conquest tells us that Duranty reported "there is no famine or actual starvation" in the Ukraine, "nor is there likely to be."

S.J. Taylor, in his 1990 book "Stalin's Apologist: The New York Times's Man in Moscow," reported that Stalin took special care to reward Duranty for his favorable coverage. The unassuming Duranty, who hobbled around on a wooden leg, traveled Russia in his own personal chauffeur-driven limousine, compliments of the Soviet dictator.

Conquest reveals that one of Duranty's tactics was to go on the offensive against less-accomplished journalists who were reporting the truth about Stalin and accuse them of false or "exaggerated" reporting.

"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda," Duranty reported in the Times on Aug. 23, 1933, one year after winning the Pulitzer.

When reports from other credible sources started piling up saying that mass starvation was occurring, Duranty changed his strategy from denial to one of downplaying the extent of the famine.

In return for his positive spin on news coming out of the Soviet Union, Stalin and his party leaders gave Duranty access that was denied more honest reporters.

"In September 1933," Conquest writes, "he was the first correspondent to be admitted to the famine regions, and reported that 'the use of the word famine in connection with the North Caucasus is a sheer absurdity,' adding that he now felt for this area at least his earlier estimate of excess deaths had been 'exaggerated.'"

Duranty wrote of "plump babies" and "fat calves" as typical of the region. He blamed "famine stories" on emigres coming out of Russia, "encouraged on the rise of Hitler, and spoke of 'the famine stories then current in Berlin, Riga, Vienna and other places, where elements hostile to the Soviet Union were making an eleventh-hour attempt to avert American recognition by picturing the Soviet Union as a land of ruin and despair,'" according to Conquest.

Idolizing Stalin and describing him as "the world's greatest living statesman," Duranty was thrilled to be granted the first American interview with the genocidal despot.

"Even today this is the way of things with the establishment media, who will sell their souls for 'access' to those at the pinnacle of power," wrote David Kupelian, managing editor of WND and Whistleblower magazine, in a 2012 column titled "The Lie Launderers," which focused on Duranty and other discredited journalists who have been used by governments the world over.

Spurred by widespread calls that the Pulitzer board revoke Duranty's award, even the New York Times bemoaned their reporter's "largely uncritical recitation of Soviet sources" and confessed that Duranty's articles constituted "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper."

Yet, in 2003, when faced with an opportunity to strip Duranty of his Pulitzer Prize, the Pulitzer board voted to leave the prize intact, saying that while his overall body of work "falls seriously short" of today's standards, their decision had to be based on the actual 13 articles he submitted for the 1932 prize.

So, perhaps by comparison, the Times' early articles on Hitler should not be judged so harshly, as these were at least "early" articles. The dispatches filed by the Gray Lady's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter in 1932 and 1933 were filed at the peak of Stalin's brutality.