W. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: What people say today about the first televised presidential debate, between Nixon and JFK, doesn’t match first reactions in 1960.

What the public is often told nowadays about that first-of-its-kind debate, which took place without an audience in a television studio in Chicago, does not quite square with reactions and perceptions that circulated at the time. As the debate’s aftermath made clear, first assessments can be fleeting and prone to dramatic revision.

I examined scores of newspaper articles, editorials and commentaries written in the debate’s immediate aftermath in researching a chapter for “Getting It Wrong,” my 2017 book about media-driven myths. There was, I found, no unanimity among newspaper columnists and editorial writers about Nixon’s appearance. Not all of them thought Nixon’s performance was dreadful or that Kennedy was necessarily all that appealing.

The Washington Post, for example, declared in an editorial two days after the debate: “Of the two performances Mr. Nixon’s was probably the smoother. He is an accomplished debater with a professional polish, and he managed to convey a slightly patronizing air of a master instructing a pupil.”

The debate moderator, Howard K. Smith of ABC News, later was quoted as saying he thought “Nixon was marginally better” than Kennedy.

Flashback to Campbell in 2017: No, ‘Politico’ — Viewer-listener disagreement is a myth of JFK-Nixon debate.