Jul 22, 2009 10:25 AM
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New York, 4:13 AM
Wed Feb 10
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There are corrections and then there are Corrections, and error-prone New York Times mistaker Alessandra Stanley got corrected today. For the second time. For the same Walter Cronkite story. Cronkite was good, but he didn't "storm the beaches" on D-Day.
The NYT ran one, smaller correction of this story immediately after it ran on Saturday, but they come back today with the smackdown:
An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite's career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite's coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. "The CBS Evening News" overtook "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents' reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of "The CBS Evening News" in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International. (Go to Article)
1. Since everybody knew Cronkite was on the way out, wouldn't Alessandra—or maybe an editor!—check this, in advance?
2. Maybe Alessandra is a closet Wikipedia fan, and that's why she makes so many mistakes? But then we checked and Wikipedia actually has the correct dates for those events, not the ones she used. Alessandra Stanley would actually benefit by checking her facts on Wikipedia.
[NYT]
Send an email to Hamilton Nolan, the author of this post, at Hamilton@gawker.com.
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