"During the 1930s, as Josef Stalin was establishing communism in the U.S.S.R., the Times’ man in the Soviet Union was Walter Duranty, who openly sympathized with Stalin and communism. (Duranty was hardly unusual in that regard, as numerous intellectuals, clergymen, politicians, and union leaders also embraced the Russian "alternative." In fact, Duranty’s reporting from the U.S.S.R. as Stalin was consolidating his first Five Year Plan was considered so informative and important that the reporter was awarded the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence. Duranty’s picture still hangs in the lobby of the Times building, as the newspaper proudly displays him among its many other Pulitzer Prize winners.
The only problem is that Duranty wrote nothing but lies, and it is even more apparent that the leadership of the Times had been informed on numerous occasions that Duranty was painting a false picture of Stalin’s actions. While Duranty told the readers of the Times that the Five Year Plan was successfully transforming production in the U.S.S.R. and giving the citizens of that nation an ever-improving standard of living, the opposite was actually true."
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2001/11/william-l-anderson/the-ny-times-scandal/