The least-scintillating stories a reporter can be assigned occur during the holidays, when the need for filling the paper is great and the news is nowhere to be found.

The reporter we asked to cover the annual Kailua Fourth of July parade this month diligently went to the event looking for a fresh angle about something that has been covered year after year and decided to concentrate on politics — always a risky proposition. There was nothing wrong with pointing out that among the marchers were those who supported or opposed plans for a rail system in Honolulu and included backers of Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

However, when the reporter discovered a list of those expected to march in favor of McCain and Obama, things got tricky. With the help of an observer, she counted the number of those who marched in support of the candidates and matched it against the number of marchers expected. McCain's organizers expected 250 and 70 showed up. Obama supporters figured 100 would appear and 80 marched.

In the story the reporter turned in, she said the McCain camp's number of marchers was "overestimated" and made what was meant to be a witty reference about McCain supporters hopefully not overestimating their support on Election Day. An editor, trying to balance the piece, rewrote her story to say, "Supporters of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama were also in full spin mode, each camp overestimating the size of their respective contingents."

We never heard from the McCain folks, but Andy Winer, the Hawai'i state director for the Obama campaign, was not happy. He wondered about the source of the information that the campaign had overestimated the crowd. He was disturbed by the use of the words "spin mode" in the story.

"I believe that accusing our campaign of spinning facts makes it sound like we are being less than forthright in our dealings with the media," he said. "If there was a source for this statement, I'd like to know who it is so I can make sure we don't make any future misstatements to the media. If there is no source, then I'd respectfully suggest you consider a retraction."

I explained to Winer, as I would have to the McCain folks, that we made an honest mistake. We simply took the estimated numbers off a sheet and drew our own conclusions. The problem is that parade organizers, for planning purposes, simply asked the campaigns what the maximum number of marchers might be. They weren't trying to spin anything.

We did not run a retraction because it obviously takes some space to explain the situation. But as I mentioned to the reporter and editor involved, we have to be careful not to assign meaning where there isn't any. The reporter was trying to find a creative and original way to tell an oft-written story and the editor was trying to be fair to both political parties. Their intentions were good.

Unfortunately the few paragraphs in question ended up being unfair to both sides and again made us mindful that we should always question our assumptions in stories.

Mark Platte is senior vice president/editor of The Advertiser. Reach him at mplatte@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8080.