Pulitzer Prize - Controversies

Controversies

• Calls for revocation of journalist Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize
• Call for revocation of journalist William L. Laurence's 1946 Pulitzer Prize
• 1962 Biography Prize: Citizen Hearst: A Biography of William Randolph Hearst by W. A. Swanberg was recommended by the Prize board but overturned by the trustees of Columbia University because its subject, Hearst, was not an "eminent example of the biographer's art as specified in the prize definition".
• 1974 Fiction Prize: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon was recommended by the three-member fiction panel but the eleven other members of the Prize board overturned that decision and no award was given.
• Forfeiture of Janet Cooke's 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for fabricating the story.