THE LAST STRAW: It's a harsh truth about journalism that there's rarely enough time to find out all you need to be as expert on any subject as you're pretending. And one of the verbal techniques we use to disguise this is the important-sounding but vague adjective. For example, we'll say that the implications of a Government decision are expected to be "significant", or the effects "substantial". I don't know how many times I've resorted to this trick myself, but I'd say the number would be "considerable", writes Frank McNally.
In fact, numbers present a special challenge. Dealing with words all the time, many journalists have little or no experience with figures, apart from the short, intense bursts of activity involved in completing expense claims, after which we often need to lie down for a while. And even here, it's good practice to refer finished work for peer review, to see if the results can be replicated independently.
The risks are not confined to journalists, of course. In a recent policy document, Fine Gael miscalculated the annual borrowing requirement of its economic plan by €1 billion a year. The fault was blamed on a typing error, even though it occurred four times in the document. And while I'm no expert on finance, this seems like a significant number of typing errors.
So, it was with vague (and considerable) unease that I read an e-mail last week questioning my estimate of the attendance at the St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin. The estimate was 550,000 and, in fact, it wasn't mine. I have no idea what half a million people looks like, especially when strung out in two long lines with a parade in the middle. The estimate came from the organisers; and as Woodward and Bernstein always did, I sought a second source. The Garda Press Office couldn't help, unfortunately, but said last year's crowd was 400,000. Which is what the organisers said too, so their story about this year seemed to stand up.
Michael Collins from Dublin 12 was sceptical, however. The parade route is 1.5 miles long, he points out, which gives a crowd length of three miles. "Assuming one person occupies two feet, that's about 2,500 people per mile, or 7,500 along both sides of the whole route, one person deep, shoulder-to-shoulder." The most he has witnessed is about five rows ("after that, you just can't see anything"), but adding another for people on ladders, statues, trees and buildings, gives a total of only 45,000. Even with small people on big people's shoulders, and others just milling around, you're still struggling for six figures.
It's a persuasive argument. If anything, two feet per person is conservative. It's probably true of Scandinavians, who tend to be neat and stand straight. But Irish people take up a lot of room, as we know, with an individual often occupying up to three seats on a train. The country is under-populated by European standards, and yet it's crowded everywhere you go. So if you add the Irish concept of personal space to the parade equation, your figures are in even bigger trouble.
Crowd estimates can be very contentious. I covered a march in Derry once with a colleague who made the twin mistakes of (a) working for an English newspaper and (2) suggesting aloud that the attendance was 5,000. The local consensus was that it was closer to the turn-out for Daniel O'Connell's repeal meeting on the Hill of Tara, and a marcher who overheard poured scorn on the bias of the imperialist press.
BUT in political events, at least, you often get two opposing estimates. This offers a choice to the reader, who can interpret the variation according to taste. Unfortunately, one of the big problems with the St Patrick's Day parade is that there is no organised opposition to it. So far, anyway. Sneaky reporters will keep it vague, often using an active verb and a reference to the weather to distract attention from their imprecision, as in this example: "Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in warm sunshine." This gives a flavour of the event, with none of the risk. But it's hardly satisfactory.
So, if I have to cover the 2003 parade, I may have no alternative except to go around and count everyone. And when it comes to the round-up of events abroad, I must also remember to mention the neglected Irish of Birmingham, where 100,000 attended this year's parade, and equally-overlooked Montreal, where 650,000 turned out. I would just say to the people who wrote to me about these figures that, next year, I want detailed break-downs.
In the meantime, I send belated greetings to you and to the rest of the great Irish diaspora that covers half the globe (based on 45 million people at a minimum of three feet each).