Not a day goes by now when the New York Times doesn’t run an article about the danger of “fake news.”

So, I was reminded of the greatest bit of “fake news” ever published: the NEW YORK Times’s cover-up of Stalin’s murder of 7 million people. For which the NEW YORK Times won (and jealously keeps) a Pulitzer Prize.  Arnold Beichman remembers what fake news the paper wrote:

"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."

--New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1

"A New York report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."

--New York Times, August 23, 1933

"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please. Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin's program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding."

--New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6

"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."

--New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18

"There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."

--New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13

So long as the New York Times refuses to give back the Pulitzer Prize and apologize for the fake news it published it has no business pontificating about “fake news.”

In 2004, a Pulitzer Committee refused to take back the prize because:

...there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case. Revoking a prize 71 years after it was awarded under different circumstances, when all principals are dead and unable to respond, would be a momentous step and therefore would have to rise to that threshold.

In other words, the standard applied to such newspapers as the New York Times is whether or not it can be proved that the writer and editors knew a story is fake.