Dear Mr. Dicke:
Thank you for your prompt response.
The New York Times editorial today contradicts what you state. Yes, the number of *marchers* was roughly 30K, no one disputes that. However, your editorial, consistent with (indeed probably *relying on* the statements of) the DC police chief, asserts that "this was the biggest demo in recent history. After the last demo, the DC police chief and your newspaper, along with the Washington Post, stated that almost 100K (or more) were in attendance in October. Allow me to quote Monday's editorial:
"the protesters in Washington massed on Saturday for what police described as the largest antiwar rally at the Capitol since the Vietnam era."
No one disputes, then, that over 100K (the number the police chief stated showed up at the last *smaller* rally) showed up at the demo (and keep in mind, that is in very cold weather, which probably explains the smaller number marching).
The excuses your newspaper and the rest of the media have come up with for claiming that only 'tens of thousands' or, even more commonly, 'thousands' showed up in DC is simply astounding. No such confusion arises with a protest report from Venezuela, why must it incessantly occur in our own Washington DC?
Stephen Philion MPLS, MN
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Dicke" <dicke at nytimes.com> To: "steve philion" <philion at hawaii.edu> Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 6:50 PM Subject: Re: protest report
>
> Dear Mr. Philion:
>
> You raised a question about our coverage of the antiwar protests in
> Washington and elsewhere published on Sunday. Estimating the size of
crowds at these events isn't easy, and the National Park Service no longer
makes
> an estimate. We believe, however, that our estimate of tens of thousands
> of protesters in Washington is accurate. It was based on a good faith
> effort by a number of experienced journalists who took into account the
> geographic dimensions of the protest. Our figure may be a little vague,
but it represents our reporters' view that the number was well below
100,000,
as well as the difficulty of being precise.
> Thanks for writing.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> William Dicke
> Assistant News Editor
>
> At 11:42 PM 1/18/2003 -0600, you wrote:
> >Dear Ms. Clemetson,
> >I see your newspaper still refuses to tell us how many people showed up
at>the protest today. Only thousands? 2 thousand? 10 thousand? 25 thousand?
80>thousand? 100 thousand? How odd you could estimate rather precisely the
> >'less than a hundred' (!) 'counterprotestors', yet could only give us the
> >vague estimate of 'thousands' for the actual protest against the war.
> >
> >I should give you credit, at least this time you have not done a smear
job>on the protest participants and organizers. That is progress of a sort.
>Lucky we live in a free country where the press tells us the truth about
> >dissent.
> >
> >Stephen Philion
> >MPLS, MN
>