The numbers matter when it comes to peace protests. Everyone has a stake in crowd estimates, including the journalists who report the numbers. To the protesters and their sympathizers, bigger numbers translate to critical mass. For others, low-balling the numbers is a way of detracting from the message of the protest. For some, like the United States Park Service and local police departments, crowd estimates bring nothing but woe.
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The Seattle Times reported last week on
the range of methods official agencies employ. But for the journalist, reporting accurate crowd estimates creates credibility. Reporting bad numbers breeds distrust and charges of bias.
Minneapolis Star Tribune Ombudsman
Lou Gelfand recently answered critics on that issue: A headline over an Associated Press story accurately reflected Washington, D.C. police crowd estimates, but created a false impression of the size of the protest by omitting the bulk of the protesters gathered on Park Service land.
The problem is there are no good estimates. That was the conclusion of several experts gathered by radio station KQED in San Francisco for
an hour-long discussion of crowd sizes (scroll down until you see the segment titled "Crowd Estimates," recorded Jan. 24, 2003).
So what's a newsroom to do? Some newsrooms refrain from printing crowd estimates, because the practice is so imperfect. There's got to be a better way, even if there is no perfect way.
Here are a few options.
- One simple solution is to report the range of estimates, the sources from which they come and the stake those sources might have in manipulating the numbers.
- Some newsrooms devise their own systems for estimating numbers at local spaces where protesters often gather. This can be done through a variety of methods, including conducting a hand-count. (Experts will point out this method is inaccurate for most protests, unless an entire group is marching through a specific area.)
- Another method would be to learn how to judge crowd density and area of occupation. This requires some training.
- Independent experts can use aerial photos and computer software to estimate crowd density. Listen to Dr. Farouk el Baz, director of the Center For Remote Sensing at Boston University tell KQED how he did this after the Million Man March on Washington in 1995. The San Francisco Chronicle did just that recently. The results were rejected by both police and protesters.
No matter what method is used, there are a few things reporters can do shore up the weakness of crowd estimates. First, explain the journalistic motivations for reporting crowd estimates and the quandary that presents. Absent an explanation, viewers and readers often default to cynicism. Finally, in addition to the explanation, provide good descriptive reporting. Concrete details can give the public a better sense of crowd size than even the best numbers. Over what area did the crowd stretch? How tightly packed were the participants? How much garbage did they create? How long were the lines at the portable toilets? How many buses brought them to the location? What did the crowd look like from an aerial photo?
This is hard to do if only one reporter or photographer is covering a large protest. Since many of the big protests happen on weekends, staffing is often an issue. Reporting the details and flavor of one corner of a peace march may create an inaccurate impression of the entire event. Newsrooms need to devise strategies and devote resources to covering protests and other gatherings with balance and precision. The investment will go far in generating credibility among a divided audience.
