I was in Washington, D.C., earlier this week to cover the annual March for Life as a reporter for the Catholic press. I traveled with three busloads of youths and their adult chaperones, who came from

La Crosse, Wisconsin Rapids, Stevens Point and just about everywhere in between.
On Monday morning, we were almost overcome by the enthusiasm of the other Catholic young people, who came from all over the country and packed into every available seat in the MCI Center for Mass. The MCI Center, by the way, has a capacity of 20,000. Another 4,000 Catholic youths followed this Mass from Constitution Hall, and 700 from the Cathedral. The Diocese of Wichita, Kan., alone sent 14 busloads of high school and college students.

After Mass, we left the MCI Center and were led by police escort to the Mall area, where we were swallowed up by a massive crowd of pro-life marchers like a single drop in a bucket of water. Not being a statistician, I won’t venture to guess at the size of the march, except to say that the Associated Press’ simple “thousands” should probably have read differently.

We shivered in the Mall area in front of the capitol for two hours and then marched past the Supreme Court over the course of the next few hours in spite of our numbed hands and feet.

The kids were a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of the event, but they made it through the day because they were prepared.

What they weren’t prepared for was calling home to find that their parents missed the minute-long coverage the event merited on the evening news. They weren’t prepared to arrive home on Tuesday afternoon and pick up the paper to find that there was no coverage whatsoever. It was almost as if the whole thing had been an illusion — that it hadn’t really been that big a deal.

As a member of the press, I have a respect for editors and the decisions they have to make about coverage. I know that the coverage of controversial issues and events presents special difficulty for editors, since a fair and unbiased newspaper covers multiple viewpoints. Most often, the press ends up being attacked by both sides for its attempt at what can only be described as a thankless task. The Tribune has covered local pro-life events and issues in the past.

But abortion in general and the March for Life in particular have always presented special difficulties for a newspaper that sets out to present unbiased coverage. How does one present unbiased coverage of an event like the march, which is overwhelmingly one-sided? The solution in past years has been a careful weaving together of this pro-life event and the various counter-protests that have surrounded it.

But recent marches have made this difficult, since the number of counter-protesters has dwindled over the years. It seems that the media has found it difficult to maintain unbiased coverage simply because there are no pro-choice protesters to be found. Following what seems to be a justified editorial philosophy, coverage of the March has likewise dwindled even as the annual event grows in size.

Thus it seems that pro-choice protesters have found their absence more valuable than their presence.

I am questioning whether the lack coverage of recent marches unintentionally plays into the hands of pro-choicers. As soon as this occurs, the paper’s coverage is no longer unbiased, and the previously justified editorial policy becomes unjustifiable.

I don’t expect the whole of the Tribune’s readership to agree with what we marchers had to say, but I don’t think any reader of the paper should be “protected” from the fact that we marched.

How were these youths to express to their classmates the magnitude of last Monday? Should they conclude that it was an illusion after all? Their pictures and memories certainly say otherwise.

A paper’s job is to help initiate a discussion between two opposing sides on an issue. For the abortion issue in general and for these kids in particular, the Tribune came up short by ignoring the 2007 March for Life.

Franz S. Klein is a writer for The Catholic Times in La Crosse.

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