Editorial

REVIEW: ‘Mr. Jones’ Tells Heroic Story Of Journalist Working To Expose What The NYT Covered Up In Soviet Russia

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“Mr. Jones” tells the heroic story of a Welsh-born journalist who worked to bring light to the Soviet Union famine in Ukraine the early 1930s.

The film tells the behind-the-scenes story of the Soviet Union’s effort to cover up the famine along with the role The New York Times played in helping. Journalist Gareth Jones told the world about the famine, while NYTimes reporter Walter Duranty diligently reported only what Joseph Stalin allowed.

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Probably one of the best scenes of the movie happens when Jones arrives in Ukraine. Five children show up in this snowy world that he’s in and sing a song to him about being cold and hungry, but loyal to Stalin. The scene eerily shows just how twisted and cruel the whole situation was.

Jones preserved some of his real life thoughts in a notebook kept by his sister, according to The Atlantic.

“I crossed the border from Great Russia into the Ukraine. Everywhere I talked to peasants who walked past,” Jones wrote when he entered the Ukraine. “They all had the same story.” (RELATED: REVIEW: Ben Affleck’s New Movie ‘The Way Back’ Is Incredibly Dark)

“‘There is no bread. We haven’t had bread for over two months. A lot are dying. The first village had no more potatoes left and the store of burak (“beetroot”) was running out. They all said: ‘The cattle are dying, nechevo kormit’ [there’s nothing to feed them with]. We used to feed the world & now we are hungry. How can we sow when we have few horses left? How will we be able to work in the fields when we are weak from want of food?'”

I adore movies with historical importance because they matter a lot. Director Agnieszka Holland did an amazing job at telling a story of such political importance without letting emotion take over. The story is about things that Gareth did in an attempt to bring truth and information to people who needed to see it.

All members of the Moscow press corps pretty much knew about the famine including Duranty. Words that the press were allowed to use included “acute food shortage,” “food stringency,” “food deficit” and “diseases due to malnutrition,” but not anything else, according to The Atlantic. Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1931 for his reporting out of Moscow.

The New York Times has apologized for Duranty’s reporting from the time period, but the Pulitzer board has not made any moves to revoke his award.

“Taking Soviet propaganda at face value this way was completely misleading, as talking with ordinary Russians might have revealed even at the time,” a statement by the outlet said. “Duranty’s prize-winning articles quoted not a single one – only Stalin, who forced farmers all over the Soviet Union into collective farms and sent those who resisted to concentration camps. Collectivization was the main cause of a famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine, the Soviet breadbasket, in 1932 and 1933 – two years after Duranty won his prize.”

The board claimed there was no “clear and convincing evidence” that Duranty was deliberately deceptive, but did agree that his work fell “seriously short” compared to modern day reporting standards.

“…the board concluded that there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case,” a statement from the Pulitzer board said in 2003. “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.”

None of the press corps worked to expose the famine and that’s the job of a journalist. It’s not about how you feel about the information or the facts, it’s about uncovering them and delivering them to those who need to know it. In this case, it was the rest of the world.