The Pulitzer Board has a history of refusing to rescind awards for bad, shoddy or downright fake news reporting.
How about a correction or at least an apology?
Never.
In 1932, the board refused to cancel the award it gave to the New York Times Moscow bureau chief Walter Duranty for his coverage that celebrated Josef Stalin as a leader and his policies, while overlooking mass starvation that led to the deaths of millions.
The Pulitzer Board said it would not rescind the award because it did not find “clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception” in Duranty’s reporting.
In what he might claim is his bid to make Pulitzer Prizes great or at least meaningful again, President Donald J. Trump is suing the board to rescind the Pulitzers awarded to the Washington Post and New York Times for their false reporting on Trump-Russia collusion.
Florida’s Supreme Court has said Trump’s lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board can proceed, denying the board’s attempt to stall the lawsuit until after Trump leaves office.
R. Quincy Bird, an attorney for Trump, told the Daily Business Review, part of Law.com: “This was a correct and just decision by the Florida Supreme Court. President Trump is committed to holding those who traffic in fake news, lies, and smears to account, and he will see this powerful case through to a winning conclusion.”
“We now continue a very illuminating discovery process,” Bird said.
Since the Pulitzer Prizes were established in 1917, the Pulitzer Board has only rescinded one award. In 1981, the board canceled the prize it had given Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke, who later admitted that her story about an 8-year-old heroin addict was fabricated.
After Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal in May rejected the Pulitzer Board’s request to delay discovery in the case, the board asked the Florida Supreme Court to take up its case, but on Aug. 26, 2025, the state’s high court turned the board away, letting the lower court’s ruling stand.
Writing for The New York Sun on Aug. 27, Bradley Cortright, noted it is not clear what the Pulitzer Board’s next steps will be.
The board told the Sun: “Allowing this case to proceed facilitates President Trump’s use of state courts as both a sword and a shield — allowing him to seek retribution against anyone he chooses in state court while simultaneously claiming immunity for himself whenever convenient.”
Cortright noted: “The board has advanced a novel legal argument: That it has the ability to decide Trump is too busy to pursue his litigation. The board says that the case presents ‘constitutional conflicts’ and that it would ‘interfere with his official duties and responsibilities.’ The board also said that allowing the lawsuit to continue would let courts ‘exercise ‘direct control’ over’ the president.”
The Fourth District Court of Appeal rejected that argument, saying the board was effectively asking the court to “invoke a temporary immunity under the Supremacy Clause on [Mr. Trump’s] behalf to stay this civil proceeding, even though [Mr. Trump] has not sought such relief.”
“The Pulitzer board tends to support journalism that upholds or enforces liberal and progressive viewpoints, especially regarding race, policing, and Trump,” Cortright wrote. “Its board members include anti-Trump journalists such as David Remnick of the New Yorker and Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic, as well as professors of identity-focused disciplines such as African American studies and ‘ethnicity.’ So far, the board has indicated it is not interested in trying to settle the president’s lawsuit.”
The Pulitzer Prize operation is funded, housed, and overseen by Columbia, one of the richest American universities, with a $15 billion endowment that would likely be on the hook to pay any judgment or settlement. Columbia has already agreed to pay a $200 million fine to the federal government as part of a settlement related to antisemitism on campus.
