A half-dozen emailers and a pair of callers griped Monday about our coverage of the local protest rally against California’s new ban on gay marriage.  Alongside our story, we re-ran the list of eastern Idaho donors to the Proposition 8 campaign. That list was meant to buttress the idea that eastern Idaho played a key role, but it bugged readers who accused us of trying to whip up a mob.

“…utterly disgusted and appalled,” wrote one Idaho Falls man. “…to be so blatantly biased by printing only the names of the people who supported Prop 8 is unbelievably reckless and irresponsible reporting. Where are the names of the people in Southeast Idaho that were against Prop 8 and how much did they contribute? Don’t you think that would be a fair question to ask?”

Actually, we had asked that question a week earlier, when we did the original follow-the-money story. On that day, we reported eastern Idaho had spoken loudly in California’s gay marriage debate. Dozens of supporters of the ban donated about a quarter of a million dollars. Opponents of the ban made little impact. We found a pair of donations under $200 and reported that, too. That was news: historic, unique, definitive of local political trends during seismic shifts in national voting patterns.

A week later, when we began planning to cover the Idaho Falls rally, I asked the weekend crew to be sure to include a summary of the donations. I’ve never seen Idaho, much less eastern Idaho, show so much interest in a ballot measure in another state and the “Join the Impact” rally was at least in part a reaction to that. Gay marriage advocates in California have, since Election Day, organized nationwide protests of the ban. Some have targeted the Mormon Church, which is credited (by both sides) with mobilizing a vital cash infusion during the final push. If you’re going to explain the story, you have to provide the underpinnings and that list of donations makes it clear the California law is a local issue. When I walked callers and emailers through it, most of them saw our point.

Ironically, we had spent far more time thinking about how we would handle anti-Mormon slurs, if any. Our code of ethics calls us to “tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience…avoid stereotyping…support the open exchange of views…” even repugnant views.

 That’s a tall order when heated rhetoric starts to fly. At rallies earlier in the week, protesters resorted to hate speech (one sign said “My two mommies can beat up your 14 wives”) and we lined up spokespeople to reply. I’m a student of Poynter Institute scholar Keith Woods’ very useful ideas about what he calls “writing across difference.” I wanted us to be ready to explain why cracks about plural marriage promote hurtful stereotypes. Fortunately, local protesters stuck to the issues in exercising their free speech rights and we didn’t have to explain people to each other in that way.

By Monday afternoon, most of those I talked to by phone and those who had written angry emails seemed satisfied that our aim was righteous. What’s remarkable is how quickly people holler “media bias” when they don’t like a story, and how quickly they back down from that charge when we explain our journalistic purpose.

What that tells me is that we could have labelled the list better to signal to readers that we were placing the nationwide and local protests in local context, not targeting people for their political contributions.