MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th May, 2020) US President Donald Trump has called on the New York Times newspaper, which won three Pulitzer Prizes on May 4, to return the awards for biased coverage and falsifying sources .
One of the awards the newspaper received was the 2020 prize for international reporting with a series of articles that proclaimed to show the "predations" of Russian President Vladimir Putin's "regime." Late on Tuesday, Trump took to Twitter to slam the daily for its coverage of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign team and Russia. The probe ended in 2019 and found no conclusive evidence of collusion.
"The Failing @nytimes, winner of @PulitzerPrizes for its totally flawed coverage of the illegal Russia Witch Hunt, does its research as follows: Think of the absolute worst things you can say about Donald J. Trump, pretend there are sources, and just say it. RETURN THE PULITZERS!," the president wrote on Twitter.
The New York Times has faced criticism in Russia over its alleged misreporting of several events, including the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. On May 12, the newspaper published an article entitled "A Number Defies Propaganda: 1,700 Extra Deaths in Moscow," which claimed that the Moscow authorities were downplaying the number of deaths resulting from the coronavirus disease.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova rejected that Russia has manipulated the epidemiological statistics, and WHO Representative in Russia Melita Vujnovic confirmed that there has been no deliberate underestimation of COVID-19 mortality in the country.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also slammed the newspaper for publishing false information, after allegations that Russia tried to keep UN findings into a hospital bombing in Syria secret. Zakharova called the newspaper's findings "fake news."
