Say What? Intellectual Heft?

The public editor at the New York Times, Clark Hoyt, has posted a rather incredible recitation of the Walter Cronkite obituary fiasco. Here is the full correction, as printed:

The Arts

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)

How Did This Happen? attempts to explain what cannot be properly explained. Cannot be explained, rather, beyond an admission of sheer incompetence. Adding to the misery, here is another correction, added just this Saturday:

Correction: August 1, 2009

An appraisal on July 18 about Walter Cronkite’s career misstated the name of the ABC evening news broadcast. While the program was called “World News Tonight” when Charles Gibson became anchor in May 2006, it is now “World News With Charles Gibson,” not “World News Tonight With Charles Gibson.”

This episode will surely go down in Journalism's history as a bright-line marker and it will likely be paired, perhaps many years from now, with a parallel reappraisal of both the "institution" writing the obituary as well as the subject of the obituary. Neither party will shine as brightly as they do today.

Review the comments posted to the public editor's piece and one might argue that something of a trifecta has been obtained; a skewering of the Washington Post as well. This gem is from Thom in DC:

Rather a venial affair compared to The Washington Post [aggressively] marketing to sell direct access to its newsroom, senior editorial and management staff to the highest bidder. Mistakes, even serial mistakes[,] are one thing, a complete ethical collapse is another.

This is even small potatoes to the Post's continuing to publish the drivel of that discredited newsroom roundheels, Sally Quinn, under the guise of writing on faith. In Washington her ravings are known as the whoroscopes!

Venial? Hardly, but the point is well-taken. When the epitaph of the New York Times as we thought we knew it (the younger generation doesn't care about this subject at all) is written, the assertion of intellectual heft for a television critic who can't be bothered with fact-checking will surely have to be noted. Could anything more casually sum up the decline? A television critic was given this assignment? With a known (and permissively accepted) reputation for factual errors? To write about Walter Cronkite?

Okay, so you knew you had a problem writer. Now, how did this happen?

The short answer is that a television critic with a history of errors wrote hastily and failed to double-check her work, and editors who should have been vigilant were not.

Got that? If not, hang on for the nuance:

Five editors read the article at different times, but none subjected it to rigorous fact-checking, even after catching two other errors in it. And three editors combined to cause one of the errors themselves.

That, my friends, is one hell of an admission. Perhaps not as bad, though, as this:

On June 19, Alessandra Stanley, a prolific writer much admired by editors for the intellectual heft of her coverage of television, wrote a sum-up of the Cronkite career, to be published after his death.

Stanley said she was writing another article on deadline at the same time and hurriedly produced the appraisal, sending it to her editor with the intention of fact-checking it later. She never did.

“This is my fault,” she said. “There are no excuses.”

Bingo. But that didn't stop Clark Hoyt from including beaucoup excuses in his piece, none of which served the New York Times well. He should have taken a hint from Stanley; this was her fault. She started the chain of errors. But initiating the chain of errors is one thing, exposing the lack of competent professionals at that paper is quite another.

Who ever thought you could see this level of mistake made by the Times on such an important story and one in which it had a month to prepare?

Damn!

Comments

[Royce]

Enjoying reading your blog. Glad you're finding the time. Thanks.

[Ree]

J.B.

This is funny the beer summit. David when I drink I smoke....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0umKaGxkkE

[Ree]

J.B.,

There is a natural law of cause and effect coming into play. when they meet up with an unmovable object.

Dear Democrats you're pushin too hard.

http://youhavetobethistalltogoonthisride.blogspot.com/2009/08/was-captain-of-titanic-democrat-too.html

[Candice]

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[Ree]

This is one of the best post I have read in a long time. Savior it my subjects:)

http://www.goingjohngalt.org/blog/2009/08/03/sovereign-default/

[Ree]

Liberia It could be Paradise.

http://youhavetobethistalltogoonthisride.blogspot.com/2009/08/liberia-it-could-be-paradise.html

[Ree]

J.B., Did you hear Paul Begala weigh in on the intellectual heft of Sarah Palin...they really are afraid of one little woman with a facebook page.

Meanwhile Grandma doesn't like that pulling the plug talk:)

Thousands are quitting AARP because of Obamacare.

http://www.leftcoastrebel.com/2009/08/thousands-quitting-aarp-over-obamacare.html

[RattlerGator]

I can't begin to tell you how happy I am that AARP might actually have some competition. It's long overdue.

Ree, I understand why they are afraid of Sarah. It's the Frumsters and Noonans that make me want to smack somebody. Andy McCarthy is working overtime to try and explain to the National Review crowd the actual lay of the land.