I have been following for years the Leftist press in this country time after time distort crowd counts on behalf of their bias. They boost crowds for leftist rallies/protests and artificially lower crowd counts of conservative rallies/protests. Of course that assumes they even cover the conservative gatherings at all or get the message accurate if they do. Looking across several news sources you get:
The
Wash-Post gives the number "Thousands"
The
New York Times gives an ambiguous number "Sea of Protesters" and later mentions "tens of thousands".
CNN reports "Tens of Thousands"
Then oddly enough the
Dailymail from the UK of all places lists the crowd as "up to 2 million". I guess only domestic news sources got the memo.
I did see in two of the sources comments on the lack of an official count. CNN states "An official crowd estimate was not available, but reporters at the scene described the massive crowd as reaching the tens of thousands." The NYT states "the police declined to estimate the size of the crowd". I will have to pay closer attention in the future, but I never recall seeing such comments for Liberal leaning gatherings. Were the police told not to get an authorized count?
I don't ever recall the media getting a crowd count wrong that slights the left or favors the right. I have seen numerous times where the count slights the right or favors the left. I guess this goes along the lines of whether the bank or IRS ever makes a mistake in your favor. Not likely.
As for the numbers. Here are a few pics to give an idea (from
Newsbusters and
WorldNetDaily):
Labels: crowd counts, media bias
