After the story ran, someone called into complain: "I was calling about the coverage you afforded to the Fair Tax rally at the Boone County Fairgrounds on June 14th. You reported that there were 1500 people in attendance. There were easily four thousand. You can verify that with FairTax.org."

Should journalists estimate the crowd on their own or rely on organizers' estimates?

Gary Grigsby at the MU School of Journalism offers his perspective, "The best way of going about doing this is to get a number from an event organizer. If they say the number is 5000- you go with that number and you try to get a feel for it yourself. And if you can kind of get a feel for it and you think that there are maybe 2000 there and you feel you get a pretty good head count just by counting, you say organizers say it was 5000, but I counted about 2000 and you leave it at that."

So what do you think is fair and accurate? You can post your thoughts on KOMU's social network. Just click on the link to the left of this article.