The Daily Mail headline screamed, “A million march to US Capitol to protest against ‘Obama the socialist’.”
But American bloggers at Left Foot Forward’s sister site, Think Progress, have revealed that the organisers inflated the attendance by over 2,000 percent. They reported that Matt Kibbe, leader of the corporate-funded advocacy group which hosted the rally, “proclaimed that ABC News was reporting that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance.” But ABC News was quick to say that they were “misquoted on crowd size.”
The Mail’s own picture caption appeared to hedge their bets declaring, “Tens of thousands of people converged on Capitol Hill on Saturday to protest against government spending.”
UPDATE: Paul Canning writes in his blog post, “Daily Mail has joined the American lunatic fringe,” that:
“So why is the Daily Mail reproducing stories hot from the American right-wing blogosphere?
“Surely the reason why is money? Specifically, the American traffic to which they can sell ads that such stories generate is huge. Plus there’s reason to think it’s money because they have form.
“In January another unsourced Mail story which said that Obama’s inauguration had cost $110m was linked to from the King of the right-wing online, Matt Drudge. That story is also still live and still inaccurate.”
He also draws attention to another stupid placard:
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22 Responses to “Daily Mail crowd estimate out by 2,000 per cent”
Luke
I remember reading the march against the ‘socialist’ Barack Obama in the Mail yesterday. Seemed quite a far-fetched feat for the protest to reach a million. The Daily Mail has been trying to push into the American market for some time, particularly in ex pat States such as Florida.
French Football
I really like your blog! I have bookmarked it! Keep up the good work!
Politics Summary: Thursday, September 17th | Left Foot Forward
[…] President Jimmy Carter has suggested that animosity levelled at Barack Obama – such as protests in Washington, D.C. at the weekend – is “based on the fact that he is a black […]
dan hancox
daily mail inflates numbers on anti-‘socialist’ obama demo by 2000% http://tinyurl.com/lpadzo
Nii-Teiko Tagoe
RT @danhancox: daily mail inflates numbers on anti-‘socialist’ obama demo by 2000% http://tinyurl.com/lpadzo <that is a madness. God Bless