Medium Demonstration, Big Press

Yesterday there was a small-to-medium demonstration on the Mall, not nearly as big as the anti-war demonstrations of the Bush era but 60-70,000 people, that's pretty big, especially for a conservative issue. The Washington Post chose to feature the demonstration at the top of page A1. A quote in a box at the top of the page: "Nobody's standing up for us, so we have to stand up for ourselves," is attributed to one Phil Chauncey of Clinton, Tennessee. Here is the photograph that dominates the top half of the page:

Can you imagine the outrage if a liberal flew the flag upside-down? The antipatriots were out in force, and The Post loved it. They say things like...

The crowd -- loud, animated and sprawling -- gathered at the West Front of the Capitol after a march along Pennsylvania Avenue NW from Freedom Plaza. Invocations of God and former president Ronald Reagan by an array of speakers drew loud cheers that echoed across the Mall. On a windy, overcast afternoon, hundreds of yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flags flapped in the breeze.

"Hell hath no fury like a taxpayer ignored," declared Andrew Moylan, head of government affairs for the National Taxpayers Union, urging protesters to call their representatives. The demonstrators roared their approval.

"We own the dome!" they chanted, pointing at the Capitol. Lashing Out at the Capitol

It might have been responsible reporting to mention at that point that the people at this demonstation do not in fact own the Capitol dome. These people represent the party that was voted out of the Capitol, and the White House, in the last election. They can bitch and moan but the fact is they lost, they do not represent the views of the majority of Americans.

Instead of correcting the erroneous statement, The Post goes on to aggrandize the demonstration:

The demonstrators are part of a loose-knit movement that is galvanizing anti-Obama sentiment across the country, stoking a populist dimension to the Republican Party, which has struggled to find its voice since the 2008 elections.

Can you see that sign in the lower righthand corner? It says "Socialism: trickle up poverty."

With Democrats in control of Congress, battling the president legislatively has been difficult. But after a spring of anti-tax rallies and summer health-care protests proved to be effective, a growing number of GOP leaders are dropping their wariness and seeing the political possibilities of latching onto this freewheeling coalition. Others are cautious about embracing views that can be seen as extremist.

Extremist? You don't say!

There are elements, apparently including editors at The Post, who would like to believe that it is mainstream to believe the President of the United States is a socialist, a Nazi, a communist. We have had lots of experience with this phenomenon in our own county. Because the news media feed on sensationalism, an outrageous and noisy group with no real support gets as much or more coverage than those who are actually getting work done amid the noisy distractions. The Post has covered the birthers and teabaggers so much that they seem to have convinced themselves that a significant proportion of Americans are actually that nutty.

This is interesting, from the AP:

Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event, said on stage at the rally 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."
...
As a result of Kibbe's erroneous attribution, several bloggers and commenters repeated the misinformation. ABC News Was Misquoted on Crowd Size

Salon had a little more level-headed story on the demonstration. They featured this photograph:

Notice the empty street in the background, as people cluster in tightly for the photo.

WASHINGTON -- "You have redefined gridlock in Washington, D.C.," Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told the crowd gathered in front of the Capitol on Saturday for a rally that was part Tea Party and part Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project. The reference was to the highways around the nation's capital, which Blackburn said she'd heard had been closed due to the 1.5 million people who'd come out for the demonstration.

Crowd size estimates like the one Blackburn gave were flying around all day on Saturday. Some said they heard 1.2 million, others 1.6 million; conservative blogger Michelle Malkin said in one post that ABC News had estimated the attendance at 2 million.

Malkin was wrong -- ABC had never reported anything like that. In her own way, Blackburn was wrong, too. So were all the others. They weren't even in the ballpark, which most news outlets estimated in the tens of thousands and D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services said, unofficially, was somewhere between 60,000 and 75,000 people. Conservatives march on Washington

I'm sure it was exhilarating for the conservatives to congregate and wave signs just like old-time hippies protesting the war in Vietnam, man. They've owned the government for so long it must be at least a little odd to have to stand on the mall and lie about your numbers, waving signs and chanting, hoping somebody inside the Capitol or inside the White House notices, besides the Secret Service snipers on the roof.

This is actually a pretty clear summary of the situation.

But the crowd numbers, and the confusion over them, were symptomatic of a larger phenomenon that was taking place on the Mall Saturday. Stepping in to the crowd there felt, at some times, like stepping into an alternate reality. It was a reality in which provisions establishing "death panels" really can be found in healthcare reform legislation, where President Obama is a Marxist and a Fascist, where the majority was represented by these protesters rather than the voters who elected a Democrat president and gave him an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress less than a year ago -- it was a reality where the D.C. Beltway had been shut down due to an influx of 1.5 million people, almost three times more than the entire population of Washington.

It was, also, a reality that would brook no interference from the one outside it. In one incident that's quickly become famous on the Internet, a CNN correspondent doing a live appearance on television was drowned out by the shouts of protesters behind her. The network was a frequent target, especially the bus it had parked on 3rd Street, which formed the border of the primary protest area. The vehicle became a gathering place for those angry about the mainstream media and what they perceive as its liberal bias. (By contrast, when most of the protesters went to a Fox News truck parked nearby, it was to express their appreciation.) One man stood out on the street in front of it, holding a large sign headlined "Today's state-controlled media." Below, he'd added the logos of various networks, and his own takes on their acronyms. There was NBC, or "Nothing But Crap," ABC -- "All Barrack (sic) Channel" -- and CBS, which he'd dubbed "Controlled by State."

At one point in the afternoon, a CNN employee stood on the sidewalk in front of the bus, a bemused look on his face despite the crowd of about 20 people that had gathered to hurl various insults at him and his company. One woman was there dressed as the Grim Reaper; she carried a sign that declared "Journalism died: 2008."

Because journalism was so good before that.

It will be interesting to see how well the corporate media can continue to drum up support for antipatriotism over the next few years of Obama's first term, if they are able to somehow make the teabaggers seem legitimate or if Americans will just stop watching the news altogether.