Beck, Limbaugh run wild with estimates on size of 9/12 protests
Conservative media have repeatedly provided conflicting crowd estimates for the 9/12 March on Washington, citing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and in some cases, millions of participants, while one unofficial D.C. fire department estimate placed the number between 60,000 and 75,000 participants. On his radio show, Glenn Beck said a "really conservative" estimate is 500,000 based on photos, and on Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Gretchen Carlson alternately claimed that "tens of thousands" attended and that "hundreds of thousands" attended.
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PolitiFact.com: D.C. fire department official said "he thought between 60,000 and 75,000" participated
Official: The crowd "only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street." PolitiFact.com investigated whether conservative bloggers were falsely attributing a picture of a large crowd on the National Mall to the 9/12 events and concluded that they were. From PolitiFact:
We spoke with Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, who said that the local government no longer provides official crowd estimates because they can become politicized. That said, on the morning of Sept. 12, Piringer unofficially told one reporter that he thought between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up.
"It was in no way an official estimate," he said.
We asked Piringer whether there were enough protesters to fill the National Mall, as depicted in the photograph.
"It was an impressive crowd," he said. But after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol the crowd "only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street," he said.
Beck claims "largest march on Washington ever," says "really conservative" estimate is "500,000"
Beck: A "really conservative" estimate is 500,000. On his September 14 radio program, Beck said:
BECK: You know, no newspaper is willing to give numbers, I think, more than 50 or 60 thousand -- unless you go overseas, and then you read the papers in the U.K., and they're saying between 1 and 2 million people marched on Washington. Let's just say it was 500,000. I mean, I would have thought it would have been a success at, you know, 200,000.
If you go to the website at GlennBeck.com and you look at the Picture of the Day -- this is down at the bottom right-hand corner -- and you click on that, there's a -- we have a collection of all the pictures and the videos of the crowds, and they are absolutely stunning.
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BECK: But if you look at the pictures that we do have -- and we're gonna do this tonight -- and you compare them to the inauguration, there's not a lot of difference.
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BECK: I'm willing to be really conservative and say 500,000 people. Just say 500,000. I mean, look at the picture. [Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program, 9/14/09]
Beck cites "overseas" reporting of Telegraph, Daily Mail on size. From the September 14 broadcast of his radio program:
BECK: The media is pounding nail after nail after nail into their own coffin right now. The American people are waking up. It doesn't matter -- even if The Washington Post wouldn't have covered it, everybody in Washington that needs to know the people are awake -- they know. It doesn't matter if it was covered at all. The people that needed to hear that message, believe me, heard the message. If you go overseas, you start to look at some real numbers. Overseas, the London Telegraph is now saying that the number is over a million. They quote --
CALLER: Oh my gosh.
BECK: They quote a source from the Park Service, the National Park Service, saying that it is the largest march on Washington ever. And they also quote somebody in the White House saying that the White House was shocked at the number. Now, you're not going to get that in the mainstream press here in America, but that's what the Daily Mail is reporting today. [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/14/09]
Neither the Telegraph nor the Daily Mail quoted "a source from the ... National Park Service, saying that it is the largest march on Washington ever." In fact, the Daily Mail article said that the size of the crowd was "by far the biggest protest since the president took office in January," but did not quote a park service official making that claim or stating that it was the "largest march on Washington ever." Nor did the article quote a White House official saying the White House was "shocked at the number," as Beck claimed.
From the September 14 Daily Mail article:
As many as one million people flooded into Washington for a massive rally organised by conservatives claiming that President Obama is driving America towards socialism.
The size of the crowd - by far the biggest protest since the president took office in January - shocked the White House.
Demonstrators massed outside Capitol Hill after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue waving placards and chanting 'Enough, enough'.
Tens of thousands of people converged on Capitol Hill on Saturday to protest against government spending
The focus of much of the anger was the president's so-called 'Obamacare' plan to overhaul the U.S. health system.
Demonstrators waved U.S. flags and held signs reading 'Go Green Recycle Congress' and 'I'm Not Your ATM'.'
The protest on Saturday came as Mr Obama took his campaign for health reforms on the road, making his argument to a rally of 15,000 supporters in Minneapolis.
From a September 13 Telegraph article:
Tens of thousands of conservative 'tea party' protesters have staged the biggest demonstration of Barack Obama's presidency, thronging Capitol Hill to denounce runaway government spending.
The protest on Saturday demonstrated the potency of grassroots opposition to Mr Obama despite a landmark speech to Congress last week that attempted to quell opposition to his overhaul of the health-care system.
Saturday's march marked the end of a summer in which angry scenes at "town hall" meetings caught the White House off guard and damaged the campaign for Mr Obama's health-care proposals.
[...]
Organisers included FreedomWorks, led by Dick Armey, a former Republican leader on Capitol Hill who helped bring down President Bill Clinton's health-care bill in 1994. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, also a conservative Republican, demanded a return to "constitutional government" and insisted that it was "time that the president started listening to us".
There was no official crowd count. Organisers, who had expected between 25,000 and 50,000, put the total at 75,000 but many estimated that it was much higher.
The demonstration dwarfed a rally held by Mr Obama in Minneapolis, Minnesota at which he promised to drive through reform with or without Republican support. "I will not accept the status quo," he declared.
Limbaugh joins Beck in citing British press, refers to "2 million people crowd"
Limbaugh also cites British press, claims more people at protests than at "Obama's immaculation." From the September 14 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:
LIMBAUGH: What an event that was on Saturday. In fact, folks, there were more people at that event on Saturday -- according to the British press -- than there were people who showed up at Obama's immaculation back in January.
Limbaugh refers to "2 million people crowd" at protests. From the September 14 Rush Limbaugh Show:
LIMBAUGH: You don't need a leader -- Clarice Feldman's exactly right. You don't need a charismatic leader to get you out of the house and to spend money to drive or fly to Washington to get a hotel for Friday and Saturday night and show up as part of a 2 million people crowd on Saturday, and then leave the place as clean as you found it, like Dan's Bake Sale. Some of the pictures after the event -- there were no messes, just like Dan's Bake Sale.
Fox & Friends' Doocy and Carlson cite conflicting numbers and attack media
Carlson claims "tens of thousands gathered in Washington," while Doocy claims "hundreds of thousands of people" marched in Washington. From the September 14 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:
CARLSON: Thousands of Americans concerned about big government and health care reform gather in Washington, D.C., but where was the media? Look at all those people. And why is the left downplaying their concerns again?
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CARLSON: Tens of thousands gathered in Washington, D.C., this weekend to take a stand against government spending and health care reform. Did the mainstream media largely -- largely, that is -- ignore the march? Look at all those people there. We're back with our panel. And what I want to know is, Angela, you were there personally.
ANGELA McGLOWAN (Fox News contributor): Yes. I was there. I spoke at Freedom Plaza, and then I spoke before the Capitol. And I tell you -- I spoke at 9:30, and then I spoke again at 10:50. I know there was about 400,000 people then, and then I had to leave. It was amazing. And Gretchen, you had people, black, white, Hispanic, you had reverends, you had doctors, people from all socioeconomic backgrounds together. And that's what our constitution stands for. Our forefathers want us to state our grievances to our elected officials, and they felt tired because they felt like they were being ignored. But look at that -- isn't that amazing?
CARLSON: So it was an amazing crowd. Michelle, here is my question to you: a couple months ago when town hall meetings started happening and tea parties started happening. Let's face it, the Obama administration and people on the left have basically said this was not mainstream America. This was a fringe element. Do you think now that there has to be some sort of acknowledgment, or has there been that this really is a concerted effort by millions of people?
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DOOCY: Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people marching in Washington to take a stand against government health care reform and the high cost of government. So why did the media largely ignore them again?
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DOOCY: Speaking of tea parties. On the day after 9-11, 9-12 -- on Saturday -- tens of thousands, and you know, there's so much debate how many people actually showed up down in Washington, D.C. The New York Times did say that authorities were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the number of people showed up. But, nonetheless, David Axelrod was on one of the chat shows -- I mean, look at that picture right there. That is extraordinary. That's not Photoshopped or anything else. There are a lot of people streaming from the White House to Capitol Hill.
David Axelrod said yesterday on one of the chat shows that those people at those tea parties do not represent mainstream views. Listen to this.
AXELROD [video clip]: I don't think it's indicative of the nation's mood. In fact, I don't believe that some of the angriest, most strident voices we saw during the summer were representative of the thousands of town hall meetings that went on around the country. [edit] They don't represent a mainstream view of this health care plan. [edit] My message to them is they're wrong.
CARLSON: Maybe not the mainstream media view, because the mainstream media has discounted these types of tea parties.
Malkin repeated false estimate of 2 million that protest organizers misattributed to ABC News
Malkin: "ABC News reporting crowd at 2 million." On her website, Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin wrote of the protest: "ABC News reporting crowd at 2 million," adding: "Teeny, tiny fringe, huh?" However, ABC News later asserted that it was misquoted on the crowd size and that it had "reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department":
Conservative activists, who organized a march on the U.S. Capitol today in protest of the Obama administration's health care agenda and government spending, erroneously attributed reports on the size of the crowds to ABC News.
Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event, said on stage at the rally Saturday that ABC News was reporting that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance.
At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number anywhere near as large. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. In its reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as "tens of thousands."
Brendan Steinhauser, spokesman for FreedomWorks, said he did not know why Kibbe cited ABC News as a source.
As a result of Kibbe's erroneous attribution, several bloggers and commenters repeated the misinformation.
In his blog, Kibbe apologized Sunday for the mistaken attribution of the crowd-size estimated to ABC News.
"With a dead IPhone, I had been shown tweets from a number of different folks behind the stage citing the ABC estimate," he wrote. "They didn't say it. I regret misrepresenting the network, as their coverage that day was fair and honest." [ABCNews.com, 9/13/09]
Nate Silver: 2 million number "a real whopper." On his blog FiveThirtyEight.com, statistician Nate Silver wrote: "[Y]esterday, someone told a real whopper. ABC News, citing the DC fire department, reported that between 60,000 and 70,000 people had attended the tea party rally at the Capitol. By the time this figure reached Michelle Malkin, however, it had been blown up to 2,000,000. There is a big difference, obviously, between 70,000 and 2,000,000. That's not a twofold or threefold exaggeration -- it's roughly a thirtyfold exaggeration" [emphasis in original].
The nutjobs had 8 years to ruin the country. Obama's been in office 8 months. He deserves a chance.
Nobody is labeling people who oppose Obama racist just because they oppose him, it is the way in which "some" people oppose this president that makes them racist. I'm sure you can tell the difference right?
Our capitalist system is never going away, never. To suggest otherwise is pure ignorance.
Grow up and pay attention.
Second, your ignorant argument that "the only" system available to the American rebels was capitalism is absolutely false, for various reasons. Come on!! It was 1776, slavery was legal, there were no central banks, no corporations, no global communications. To compare "capitalism" in 1776 to "capitalism" in 2009 is preposterous.
Thirdly, I find it incredible that you would believe capitalism to be under fire when its basic tenants (i.e. private property, freedom of coercion from others, equality under the law, and the enforcement of contracts) are not under discussion, attack or revision.
So I congratulate you on passing your Politics 101 course in college but you should probably read a little more history and think a little more about the problem.
which are all elements of socialism. The commerce clause in the constitution which also known as the elastic clauses has been used by the progressive movement to make the federal government to be what is today. The constitution mentions the role of the government to promote general welfare of the country, what the founders meant was issues that could not be addressed by indivituals, such as building roads, bridges, dams etc, to promote commerce and help the general public which is in contrast to helping groups and indivituals.
So? Do nothing because a few guys over two hundred years ago had no concept of the types of social problems a country with a population over three hundred million would face? The Constitution is a foundation, not the entire structure. Do you really think our founding fathers would have wanted to be placed on such a lofty pedestal that we would not question their wisdom for future generations?
And when things like healthcare, energy, housing, transportation, and food, are so engrained into our national economy that one can effect all the others, then regulation of these things is waranted, especially when all of these things can be artificially inflated through the means of production. Free capitalism can very easily and very quickly become a ravenous beast that is out of control. Self regulation is a joke. Government regulation becomes a necessity.
answer to socialism was facism, which the tools of production were privately owned but managed centrally by the government and we know what happened to them. The market is very complex and anytime wiz kids try to run it the results are disasterous. You are correct the LAISSEZ-FAIRE economy has very serious consequences I do not support it, the government has a role in regulating the economy, such as labor laws etc. but that is the extent of it, the government should not to become a player. A good healthy competion has a way of correcting the market. The constitution has made us independent, prosperous, and free, thanks to the 56 old men who wrote the greatest document in histroy and for the first time the government was from the people, not from king or queens, or ant tyrant, and freed men from their masters. freedom does not have a self life.
If Republicans don't want to be labeled as racists, perhaps they should stop hanging out with racists at their protests. You lie down with dogs...
Okpulot Taha
Choctaw Nation
Puma Politics
There were NOT millions of people there. ACORN has no ties to MMFA.
You are truly showing your wing-nut-tese here. You'd have to be quadruple jointed to tie ACORN in with MMFA.
At the war protests and the inauguration, it is bound to be the case that everyone was there in agreement. But yesterday, I'm not so sure-- many could have gone because of the freak show aspect.
Of course, ignoring the fact that ABC had reports of the protest. NBC had reports. CBS had reports. CNN had reports. MSNBC had reports. Washington Post had reports. NY Times had reports.
I mean, I'm not exactly sure what these guys want.
This morning, Joe Scarborough was lamenting that none of the mainstream media covered the Van Jones story until it was essentially over. Just completely missed the story.
As if Joe isn't one of the people who failed to cover it. He kept referring to "they" and Mika kept referring to "we."
Which is pretty sad really.
I'm torn between wanting to say the same thing about Fox Noise,
About whether they are actually part of the media, mainstream or otherwise or simply nothing more than a circus sideshow for the weaker minded among us??
We see this sort of thing all of the time, even on here a lot (Fishergirl's claim last week that Levin's book didn't even get reviewed by the NY Times for example, which, it had been). We get people claiming "I bet the NY Times won't cover THIS story!" or some other such nonsense, and then what always happens is that, yes, indeed the NY Times, or some other such "liberal" media outlet did indeed cover the story. Then, there is normally an about face from them, changing the claim to something like, "Well, it wasn't on the FRONT PAGE! SO THERE!!"
It's a classic case of you can't win really. Another example, I had a discussion with someone on my facebook page this week about the protests this weekend. She was yelling (as one does sometimes in words) and complaining that NO media outlets had covered the protest at all in the run up to the protest. I provided her with stories from Fox, and other outlets talking about the impending protest. That wasn't good enough, she claimed nobody even covered it after it happened, again, provided her with about 30 links of stories. But, those were just not good enough, and it proved "nothing" according to her.
Except for the fact that I just disproved her strawmen.
I tell the nutjobs all the time to read John Dean's book, Conservatives Without Conscience, but none ever will because Dean has been known to appear on Olbermann and that makes him some kind of raging liberal.
What I find funny is that they claim they are not mainstream, yet their ratings show that they are getting significant viewership, especially with these absurd claims, so what exactly is the definition of mainstream media by Fox?
Im sure no one will believe this but this site is seems to have a good estimate on how many people were there.
http://reason.com/blog/show/136065.html
At a capacity football game, we're talking not only shoulder-to-shoulder, but jostling. Seated. Hardly any room to walk.
I don't think this event was the same person-per-square-footage as a football stadium. Hardly.
I still with my less than 100,000 estimate.
Maybe we should have said that attendance was negative 1,900,000. That would have averaged out to a reasonable estimate.
Completely and totally lying about it is quite another.
And don't forget that there are other ways of indicating crowd size. Aerial photos can be used for grid counting. When there's a parade, you can multiply the breadth of the crowd by how long it takes to pass a given point. You can take a note of all the higher-than-average air, bus, freeway and taxi traffic in the area. One poster (wave if it's you!) suggested that they count how many port-a-johns were in use; apparently one per 300 people is a good working ratio.
My rule of thumb is to go with the side that's less desperate (not go with the number right down the middle, which Brabantio showed is not legitimate). In this case, among the ones who want to believe the event was huge, you have wild disparities, made-up claims, lack of sources and/or outright lies about sources, links to photos from prior events, and even quotes that were directly about the inauguration numbers made to look like they were about 9/12 Day. If there's been even a percent of that kind of desperation on the other side, I haven't found it.
Sorry, right ON, sometimes you make excellent sense, but here you're oversimplifying things to the point of absurdity.
There's just not enough traffic in the subway to account for anything over 70,000 attendance.
Hint there are no official reports since the so called million man march. Farrakhan threw such a fit at the 400,000 estimate that they no longer give estimates.
Randy
Well... there's some truth to this, as only a "really conservative" person would make or believe that estimate!
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...and My Blog conservatively gets 4,000 hits per day, using Beck's estimating technique!
There once was a time folks lied to hide the truth, today in America, politicians has taken lying to a hold new level. Lying has become a national pastime.
Here is a prime example:
The 2008 presidential election featured a black man with a great chance to win the presidency.
From the moment they feared Obama, the black man, could win the election Republicans shamelessly abandoned all logic and strategy and resorted to what they know best; LYING.
The campaign of lies began by labeling the black front-runner an “Elitist”, “Socialist”, and “Marxist” just to name a few.
As time went on the lies has gotten bigger and bolder.
During the race and after Obama won the presidency Republicans, in particular, broaden the lie that Obama did not have an American birth certificate. They lied knowing a black man would not do something no white man has done before, and that is become president of the United States without proof of citizenship.
They pushed this lie with provable evidence to the contrary, in fact, a copy of Obama’s birth certificate was put up on his website for all to see, not only that, but the hospital in Hawaii where Obama was born made an announcement of his birth in the local Newspaper.
It did not matter to these pathological liars.
When confronted with the truth many Republicans ignored the facts saying “I never saw the ORIGNIAL birth certificate”. In other words they wanted to keep the lie alive.
Republicans and the conservative media prove to be the greatest liars of them all. They oppose everything Obama does with misinformation, which is a creative way of lying.
Most people caught in a lie will be more careful the next time they speak, not these unremorseful liars. They simply put it on the back-burner and start a new lie.
This is what they did throughout the campaign and they have not paid a real price yet, as a result lying in the open has become contagious and out of control.
In their effort to derail the Healthcare Bill Republicans and some in the Health-Insurance industry hired liars to disrupt Democrats’ town hall forums.
We know this because a circulated memo detailing the mission, the list of meetings sites and objectives was revealed to the media.
Even when some of those who put out the memo confessed to mischief Republicans continue to lie and say the mobs were organic.
Republican wants Obama to fail and they are out to defeat his Healthcare Bill believing it will be his ‘waterloo’ In order to achieve this objective Republicans have elevated their lies into the stratosphere. “There is a provision in the Bill for a death panel” former Gov. of Alaska Sarah Palin said.
This outrageous assertion (lie) is echoed by prominent members of the Republican Party even though they know for a fact this is not true. They no longer care how they are perceived nor are they held accountable for the lies they tell.
It is clear; when it comes to a lie no one does it better (a badge of honor perhaps?).
They will lie about anything. They will lie for no reason and they will lie for the sake of lying, thereby earning America dubious distinction of having The GREATEST LIARS IN THE WORLD!!!.
These idiots have no credibility. Where were they during the last eight years? We did not hear their voices. Now they want their "voices heard". Why would Obama or anyone with common sense want to hear what they have to say, when they don't know what they are talking about. Most of them repeat Fox News talking points.
Clearly they have a problem with a black president. This is what all this anger is about. If they believe their cause is right, why not just tell the truth?
They are protesting the fact that a blackman lives in the whitehouse. We won,get over it and let the president do the job that the majority of Americans elected him to do.