November 29,1998

Abortion. That's the only word you have to mention in any conversation, and emotions are aroused , so imagine what it's like trying to make newsroom decisions about how to cover the issue. That's where we found ourselves Thursday morning at the Racine Journal Times. A group of anti-abortion protestors garnered lots of attention a few years ago when they started demonstrating every weekend at one of the busiest traffic intersections in the area, standing by the side of the road with five-bart high graphic posters that apparently purported to show the results of abortions.

Letters to the editor filled the Opinion page as to whether or not it was appropriate to bombard unsuspecting motorists (and often their young passengers) with these images, or whether the issue is so critical that people have to see the images whether they want to or not.

Those demonstrations continue, but they are no longer news. This fall they took a different direction, when about a half-dozen of the anti-abortion protestors started bringing their posters to the sidewalks in front of the local high schools, and I became interested in them as a news story.

We only heard about the school demonstrations after the fact, so we were never able to cover them until last week. Thursday I got a call from a teacher I know at Walden III Middle and High Schools that there was an uproar on the sidewalk in front of the school concerning an anti-abortion protest going on as students and teachers arrived at school. Students, teachers, and parents were yelling at the protestors when I got there. "Confrontation" is the only accurate description for what I witnessed.

I interviewed some of the protestors and typed up my notes when I got back to the newspaper. Sherri Jackson, our education reporter arrived for work as I was organizing my notes, and I told her about the protests. We agreed that the news value was not whether or not people can protest about abortion, but, rather, the controversy about taking this graphic road-show to the schools.

One of the parents we talked to was upset that young children who were with their parents when older siblings were dropped off at school, were being unwittingly forced to witness the demonstration. One of the students, whom I know, pleaded with me not to give the anti-abortion forces any publicity in the newspaper. Mike Frontier, the school principal, whom I called later in the morning, told me the school had held a "Town Meeting," something done at Walden when students and staff need to meet over important issues. At least one faculty member had asked him to try to keep us from printing anything about the protest for the same reason as the student gave.

I told Mike that our responsibility was to put the controversy in front of our readers, and let them make up their own minds. We couldn't ignore demonstrations that some 7,000 students had been exposed to. I also told him that if I could generalize and make assumptions about peoples' political views, I would guess that the same people who wanted us to keep the anti-abortion protest out of the paper are the same people who were on the side of people protesting segregation and the Vietnam War 30 years ago. And those people faced opponents back then who didn't want civil rights and anti-war marches to get any press coverage.

I pitched the story for page one at our morning news meeting. Sherri joined the meeting, with Randy Brandt, our editor; Barbara Schuetz, our features editor; Theresa Schiffer, our design editor; Joe Buttweiler, who was filling in for the city editor who was out of town; and me.

I presented three photos, two of which you see here. The third was a clear photo of one of the posters. I knew the photo was too graphic to use in the newspaper, but I wanted everyone in the meeting to know exactly what kind of demonstration I was talking about when I described the protest and confrontations. Sherri had to walk a fine-line between the two sides, and worked hard to write two balanced stories.

John Anderson, left, is confronted by Walden III Middle and High School students after he and about a half dozen other anti-abortion protestors displayed graphic posters in front of the school at 1012 Center St. Thursday November 19, 1998. Photo by Mark Hertzberg © 1998 Racine Journal Times

About a half dozen anti-abortion protestors displayed graphic posters in front of Walden III MIddle and High School at 1012 Center St. Thursday November 19, 1998 as students and staff arrived for school. Photo by Mark Hertzberg © 1998 Racine Journal Times

We talked for 45 minutes about the story. Was it news? If so, how and why was it news? How would we cover it? How would we play it? Did the posters portray the results of a legal abortion, or did they portray the results of illegal late-term abortions? We also discussed the photos, and reached a consensus to lead with the confrontation photo, and come back with a small (two-column) photo that showed one of the posters. That photo was subtle enough that while it showed the poster and gave context to the confrontation photo, we felt it didn't show the poster directly enough to be objectionable.

We went through the same discussion at the evening news meeting. One copy editor didn't think we needed the overall protest photo at all, and we eventually compromised by putting the confrontation photo on page one, and the other one in black and white on an inside page with the balance of Sherri's report. While I would have rather played the two photos together on the cover, I accepted the compromise. We had gone from a phone tip about the demonstration to a page one story. The story didn't get to page one until we went through one of the most intense discussions I have ever been part of in any news meetings.

I got only only phone call about the demonstration, and that was from a Walden parent who backed the anti-abortion demonstrators. In fact, she said, she hoped they would continue their demonstrations.

She questioned why we used the word "confrontation." What about the students who thanked the demonstrators for coming, she asked. I told her that while some may have done so, I wasn't aware of it, having witnessed only shouting as parents, students, and teachers confronted the protestors. I told her that the teacher I know reported that one of her students called home, upset because she said she was told she would go to hell for refusing to take a pamphlet from one of the demonstrators. The reader didn't believe that ("Kids will do anything to try to get out of school, you know, even if just a few flakes of snow fall on the ground.").

The editing process worked well, in terms of the discussions we had in our news meetings. I'm disappointed, though, that so far we have not gotten any letters to the editor about the story and that only one reader called. Nevertheless, I have to believe that we generated lots of discussion around town as people saw Friday's coverage of the protests even if we haven't heard about it.