Sen. Ted Cruz slammed the Pulitzer Prize Committee for awarding the New York Times the top honor in commentary for its 1619 Project.
The 1619 Project aimed to reexamine the legacy of slavery in the United States and was timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia. Critics of the project, including some historians, have argued that the series is based on a flawed premise: that American colonists revolted from England with the goal of maintaining slavery in America.
“Pulitzer epically beclowns itself,” Cruz tweeted Monday. “Prize supposed to go to work that ‘adheres to the highest journalistic principles.’ NYT’s 1619 project is explicitly not journalism; it is propaganda.”
He continued: “NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet was caught in a leaked transcript admitting it blatantly political: “We built our newsroom to cover one story [Russia collusion] & we did it truly well. Now we have to regroup, and shift resources and emphasis to take on a different story.”
Pulitzer epically beclowns itself. Prize supposed to go to work that “adheres to the highest journalistic principles.” NYT’s 1619 project is explicitly not journalism; it is propaganda. In NYT’s words: “It aims to REFRAME OUR COUNTRY’S HISTORY.” It’s based on FALSE premises. 1/x https://t.co/sIZ5iZkqOm
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 4, 2020
In the series’ opening essay, award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote about how Africans who came to the colonies in bondage have shaped the idea of traditional American values.
“We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American,” she wrote. “But it was by virtue of our bondage that we became the most American of all.”
An editor’s note was still present at the bottom of the essay as of Monday, which reads, “A passage has been adjusted to make clear that a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them.”
Other critics were quick to voice disgust that the prize honored the 1619 Project.
People laughing miss the point — a Pulitzer win is a key part of laundering the 1619 project into respectable discourse and, as is the stated ultimate goal, our schools’ curriculum https://t.co/LlujttrUqJ
— Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) May 4, 2020
A few days ago I tweeted about why it is in the long run futile to just point out liberal hypocrisy on Kavanaugh/Tara Reade
Historians, Marxists, myriad others relentlessly pointed outed massive errors in 1619. The cultural tastemakers literally just don’t care https://t.co/0Rh8JzPrcD
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) May 4, 2020
The 1619 Project was divisive, erroneous and terrible for the country. Naturally, it was just rewarded with a Pulitzer. I devote a heavy section of my new book, available July 21, to examining its intent as well as its content. You can pre-order here. https://t.co/cvZsqgJrSa
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 4, 2020
You know, I know, & everybody else knows: nothing full of as many shoddy errors & untruths, & subject to such withering scholarly rebuttal, as the 1619 Project would be awarded such an accolade if its politics were of the right rather than of the left.https://t.co/dbS02Ya7Z6
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) May 4, 2020
A Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project, denounced by historians on the left and right as totally devoid of historical accuracy.
A curriculum based on the lies of the 1619 Project is already being taught in 3500+ schools across US. This prize will likely only increase that #. https://t.co/md5ak9znvw
— Inez Stepman (@InezFeltscher) May 4, 2020
