Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 6, 1990 TAG: 9005080498
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICH MARTIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Was it 200,000, as the U.S. Park Police estimated? Or was it the 500,000 to 700,000 that organizers claimed?
Our Page One lead story the next morning - from The Baltimore Sun, via the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service - gave the more conservative estimate of the Park Police. A front page headline also used the 200,000 figure.
Calls complaining about the figure began early Monday morning. Each caller took exception to the official estimate.
Some who had been at the rally, or who knew people who had attended, argued that the organizers' figure was correct, and insisted that it should have been reported. Several saw the absence of the higher figure as evidence of a pro-abortion rights attitude on the part of our paper.
One lady said we didn't use the higher number because we were part of a liberal media conspiracy, headed by The New York Times.
Another woman said she didn't subscribe to the paper at all because of what she saw as a consistent record of similar gaps in stories about the anti-abortion movement.
The number of people at the rally was important to each caller. An abortion-rights rally in Washington in April 1989 had drawn a reported 300,000. Another abortion-rights rally this past fall had drawn another reported 300,000. An anti-abortion march in Washington this past January had drawn an estimated 75,000 to 100,000.
Big numbers, all.
But on the volatile issue of abortion, the numbers of people at the rallies are important, and both sides want to make sure that every last person is counted.
I tried to tell each caller that we had relied on a wire service for the story they were complaining about. Though we talked to a number of Roanoke Valley residents who were going to the demonstration and wrote a Sunday Page One story about them, we had decided not to cover the rally ourselves. That left us at the mercy of our wire services for our main story.
We receive three basic wire services - the Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post and the New York Times services. The Times-Post wire gives us stories from the Baltimore Sun, Newsday, the Hartford Courant and other papers, and the New York Times service also provides stories from other newspapers.
Any or all of those papers could have had stories about the anti-abortion rally on the wire for the next day.
I checked to see what was reported by other newspapers and where their stories came from.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch used a story from the Associated Press on Page A-4. In the seventh paragraph, the AP gave the Park Police estimate, then added, "Speakers at the rally claimed larger numbers."
The Times-Dispatch story also quoted the head of the National Abortion Rights Action League as saying her side's political and election successes - and not the size of Washington rally - were the accurate measure of public opinion on abortion.
The New York Times ran a story on the front page with the headline, "200,000 Demonstrate Against Abortion." The sixth paragraph of the story gave the Park Police estimate, adding: "But organizers said the crowd was more than three times that size."
The Greensboro News & Record used the same New York Times story on its front page.
The Charlotte Observer, in a story written by a member of its Washington bureau, gave the Park Service estimate, then that of the organizers.
In its main headline, the Observer said, "At Least 200,000 People Fight `Tragedy' of Abortion." A smaller headline said, "3 Times That Estimate Attended, Activists Contend."
The Washington Post, on the front of its Metro section, gave the official estimate, then reported that organizers believed "up to 700,000" people attended.
The Post also quoted a police official as saying it wouldn't be a demonstration if there wasn't a debate over numbers.
So how many people attended the rally?
At least 200,000. Maybe three times that many.
That's a fairly large difference, of course. Since estimating crowd size is an inexact art, should we be faulted for reporting only the official estimate?
If we were talking about the number of people attending a weekend event at Festival in the Park, or the Fourth of July celebration at Victory Stadium, it might be appropriate to err on the conservative side.
But in stories about the abortion battle, it's our responsibility to let both sides have their say. We had access to the AP, New York Times and Washington Post stories, all of which gave the official and organizers' estimates of the turnout.
Because of the large difference in those estimates, we should have reported both.
by CNB