Just how many reporting errors can you cram in a story celebrating great reporting?

The New York Times put that question to the test when Walter Cronkite, the “most trusted man in America” died.

The paper issued a three-page obituary with so many errors of fact that the correction itself takes up an entire column.

To give you an idea: in their appraisal of Walter Cronkite, the Times misstated the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot, where Cronkite was when he covered the D-Day landing, the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon (on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of that event!), and several other errors including the name of the church in Manhattan where the family planned to hold a private funeral service. As Cronkite might have said, that’s not the way it is.

Sure, Cronkite died on Friday and the obit was published the following day but this is pretty basic stuff.  Trouble is, just because the Editors only correct the small stuff, doesn't mean their reporting on the big stuff is right.

Take the Vietnam War for example. The Times says only that Cronkite visited the region in 1968 and “called the conflict a stalemate” while advocating a negotiated peace. What he really said amounted to a scathing indictment of the way government officials and military leaders mislead the public. Worth pondering in light of the NYT’s own coverage of the war in Iraq and unwillingness to challenge the Bush administration.

Here’s what Cronkite had to say on February 27, 1968 on CBS Evening News. “We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds…For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate…To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.”

We’ll forgive the Times its errors of fact. But on Vietnam, history, and all the rest some omissions are unforgivable.

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.