How big is a crowd? Who knows?
Accurately estimating the number of people at events constantly challenges journalists
Canada’s new National Newsmedia Council has dismissed — with reservation — a complaint about the Toronto Star’s March report of the Ford family event held at the Toronto Congress Centre to celebrate the life of Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
The complaint concerned a question of the accuracy of the size of the crowd reported in the Star’s article “Hundreds celebrate legacy of ex-mayor.” In that article, David Rider, the Star’s city hall bureau chief, wrote that Doug Ford told “several hundred people” that the Ford family would carry on with the work of Rob Ford.
The complainant, Doug Dixon of Toronto, subsequently told the Star — and the NNC — that he believed the crowd count of “three thousand or more” as stated by “one of your competitors” (the Toronto Sun) was more accurate and in line with his experience of attending the evening event.
Dixon sought a correction from the Star. I told him the Star could not publish a correction based on the numbers published by another news organization. We told him (and the NNC) that, as the story indicated, the number reported in the Star reflected the reporter’s observations and estimation, based on his experience covering public events, of the size of the crowd during the time Ford was speaking. It was not an overall crowd count of the entire evening.
“Of course, all direct observation is subjective and it behooves reporters to strive for the utmost fairness in reporting their own observations,” I told Dixon, adding that I had considerable confidence in Rider’s experience, credibility and record of fairness, as do his editors.
Indeed, I told him, this reporter had “no reason not to report accurately and fairly what he observed.”
I also made clear that the question of crowd counts is a perennial challenge for journalists. As I have written before, crowd counts in news reports are often not exact, nor stated with exactness. The estimated size of any crowd reported by most any news organization is likely always open for debate.
Indeed, published reports of the crowd size of the Ford event ranged from the admittedly vague “sev- eral hundred” reported by the Star and other news organizations to the Sun’s high of more than 3,000. CBC News reported that “dozens of people” had begun lining up before the event began.
Dixon told us that a Toronto police officer who attended told him the next day that 8,000 to 10,000 people in all had been there throughout the night. As far as we know, police did not attend this event in any official capacity so that was not an official police estimate.
In dismissing the complaint, the media council agreed a correction was not appropriate. Of course, I think that was the right call, given the challenge of stating any number with any certainty. What exactly would a correction say?
But, in doing so, the NNC expressed valid reservations about this vexing matter of reporting attendance figures at public events. With many Pride events scheduled throughout this week, including next weekend’s Pride parade, these are points well worth pondering.
The council called for particular caution from journalists in reporting on events “with strong potential for controversy.
“Council further recognizes that crowd estimates are important,” stated this week’s decision. “In controversial or political contexts, they are significant for both supporters and opponents.
“Council notes that crowd size is an ‘age-old’ problem in reporting, and media in general should be aware of the need for accuracy in this matter as in any other,” the decision said. “Better journalistic practice is to avoid reporting numbers and numerical estimates unless they can be verified.”
I am not sure where that leaves us. Editors — and readers, too, I think — consider crowd counts relevant context to understanding an event. But there is no way to verify the exact size of a crowd.
Certainly most reporters have devised methods of trying to determine how many people make up a crowd. As I’ve written in the past, these include counting out a group of 100 people then seeking to determine how many groups of 100 can be counted overall. It’s not uncommon either for reporters from various news organizations to talk among themselves to determine some crowd size consensus based on groupthink and best “guesstimates.”
And journalists should make clear to readers that any crowd count reported is an estimated number — not a statement of fact. We might also consider providing a range of the number of estimated people in attendance based on the journalists’ own observations, what organizers report and what police overseeing the event tell journalists — and attributing those numbers to appropriate sources. Keep in mind however, as I told Dixon, that journalists do not, and should not, consider police estimates the gold standard of crowd counts either.
So how many people will attend Pride events this week? Who knows? Indeed, no one can know for certain. publiced@thestar.ca