Debunking a Walter Cronkite Myth

Will there be more corrections in The New York Times' coverage of Walter Cronkite's death?

This past weekend, Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt recounted in agonizing, embarrassing detail how the paper of record managed to run an appraisal of the life and work of CBS' beloved anchorman that contained seven separate mistakes (including the dates of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the moon landing) despite being handled by five editors. That article was by Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley, who has a long history of factual errors in her work, and according to Hoyt, she will now have her very own copy editor as she was in 2005 after a string of errors.

But will the paper need to correct Douglas Martin's A1 obituary as well? According to a segment from NPR's On the Media (via Jim Romenesko's Poynter blog), a bit of commonly-held wisdom about Cronkite inspiring Swedes to call their anchormen Kronkiters is a myth. "I think that this is a classic example of an anecdote that’s simply too good to check," Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus told OTM's Bob Garfield. Zimmer traced the anecdote to books by David Halberstam and Gary Paul Gates, but could not find earlier examples.

"And since the late '70s, when it was first reported by Halberstam and Gates, it was picked up and embellished along the way," he continued.

That would mean this nut graph from Martin's obit might require another look:

"Along with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC, Mr. Cronkite was among the first celebrity anchormen. In 1995, 14 years after he retired from the 'CBS Evening News,' a TV Guide poll ranked him No. 1 in seven of eight categories for measuring television journalists. (He professed incomprehension that Maria Shriver beat him out in the eighth category, attractiveness.) He was so widely known that in Sweden anchormen were once called Cronkiters."

Update: Since this item was written, The Times has added a correction to Martin's Cronkite obit.