Newspaper Page Text
The March that TIME lorgoi
The silence has been deafening in the
weeks since the National March on Wash
ington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The larg-
estmass wedding ceremony, the largest civil
rights demonstration, the largest civil dis
obedience action at the Supreme Court in
U.S. history, each passed with scant notice in
the news media. Time, Newsweek, U.S. News
and World Report, even People, the magazine
built on pictures, completely ignored the
historic events which gripped Washington
D.C. in October.
A spokeswoman at the local bureau of
Time blamed the omission on lack of space
and "breaking news stories."
"Little Jessica fell in the well this week,
you know," she said.
When reminded that the nation had just
witnessed the largest civil rights demonstra
tion in history, with 500,000 participants
(surely worthy of mention in Time), she re
sponded incredulously, "the largest in his
tory? Have you ever heard of Martin Luther
King?” About 250,000 marchers joined King
in Washington in 1963. Confronted with this
comparison the spokeswoman replied, "Well,
I had no idea it was so large."
The uniform silence of the major
newsmagazines raised questions of homo
phobia in the editorial boardroom. Time's
spokesperson assumed a wounded tone
when this explanation was suggested. "Oh,
you're so wrong about that," she said. "I
know the people who make these decisions
and I can tell you they are anything but
homophobic. There are just so many impor
tant stories and lots of things get squeezed
out when there's breaking news."
The controversy which engulfed cover
age of the March began even as the five and
a half hour March was making its way from
the Elipse to the Mall. Early estimates by the
National Park Service put the number of
marchers at only 75,000, a figure which was
later increased to no more than 200,000.
Early televised reports placed thecrowd
at between 50,000 and 150,000. But as the
marchers continued to fill the Mall as the
afternoon rally unfolded, it became obvious
to skeptics that the numbers were much
more massive. Relying on Park Service ob
servers who informed organizers that each
block of the Mall could accomodate 150,000
people, organizers announced that the four
block long assembly compromised 600,000
marchers.
When reports were filed at newspapers
around the country, most stories settled on
the Park Service figure, noting parentheti
cally the organizer estimates. The implica
tion of wishful inflation was clear, and the
story quickly faded from view.
As for the newsweeklies, they have yet
to publish letters of complaint about the
coverage. After all, nobody can cover every
thing that happens.^
(Originally published in The News,
November 13,1987.)
*and Newsweek
and U.S. News and
World Report
and People and •••
TIME, Newsweek, et al. may not have
been at the 1987 March, but we were.
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