The other day, The Comics Journal daily weblog, ¡Journalista!, noted that a Reuters report on the current Marvel/Sony lawsuit had made reference to "artist Stan Lee." (Actually, it made reference to "San Lee," but that isn't the kind of mistake that gets anyone — not even Stan — upset…)
In this case, the "artist" reference is a bit unsettling since the artist who did co-create Spider-Man, Steve Ditko, has gone spectacularly unmentioned in all the publicity about the movies. So not only is he not getting credited (let alone, paid) but folks are acting like the non-drawing Mr. Lee created the much-merchandised visual and drew the early comics, as well. Reporters are enormously sloppy about things like this even though it's very easy to check.
This is more than a matter of folks being denied their due. Money — and therefore, financial security — are often linked not only to what you do but whether you get your name on it. Moreover, a lot of relationships between collaborators have been harmed and even terminated because one guy seemed to be getting more than his share of credit. It is important to note that, while sometimes one participant does things to screw the other(s) out of recognition, it also sometimes happens due to bad reporting.
Stan Lee, of course, is not an artist and has never claimed to be one. But I just did a Google search for "artist Stan Lee" and got 117 hits. A few are cases where the word "artist" just happened to come before his name and was not intended as a descriptor. Still, there are at least 100 instances where someone thought Stan was the artist, and some of them are from pretty important sources. This kind of mistake does more damage than you'd think.