March On Washington

On Saturday, September 12, 2009 there was a march on Washington DC in protest of the Obama administration's spending and health care plans. It is interesting to notice how different news outlets reported the number of participants in attendance.

The BBC, hardly a bastion of conservative idealism reports that "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."

This same event is reported by ABC as "Thousands of conservative protesters from across the country converged on the Capitol Saturday morning to demonstrate against President Obama's proposals for health care..."

What the BBC calls nearly one million people, ABC calls thousands. And that isn't the only instance. CBS labeled the event on their website as "Thousands Pack Downtown DC To Protest Spending".

Not to be outdone CNN at least referred to the group as "tens of thousands" in a blog (I couldn't find a story about it in their regular news section) but they couched it in terms of racism. "Obama doesn’t think the protests and the growing conservative movement against Obama are motivated by racism."

Is it any wonder that we have stopped trusting the traditional news sources and their liberal "agenda journalism"? What the BBC calls a million (the web page's title is labeled 'up to two million march'), American news outlets try to minimize by referring to it as thousands or tens of thousands. Does anyone remember the Million Man March? That event was covered for weeks, always citing the number of one million. Not many actually remember that the actual count was closer to 400,000 men according to the Clinton administration's National Park Service.

Why do you think the disparity in reporting exists? Can anyone say liberal media bias?