200,000 protesters, only 200 arrests.

[Beware the Beast Man]

I have to say that's a pretty nice ratio. Those are concert festival numbers.How much you want to bet that the media hos will focus more on the 200 figure than the 200,000?

[RebelOne]

1. On CNN this morning,

it was said that there were several hundred arrests.

[Beware the Beast Man]

3. Yeah, "several hundred."

Let's imply that they're were more arrests, shall we? :eyes:

[chelsea0011]

2. Why does the media keep saying 1000's instead of hundreds of 1000's

minor but telling

[welshTerrier2]

4. spin those stats

We're more likely to get this:

"NYC police had a busy day arresting hundreds of lawbreaking protesters."

than this:

"A massive demonstration that some estimates said contained half a million people was extremely orderly ... police said that all but a very small percentage of demonstrators were very well behaved."

[Beware the Beast Man]

6. Here's a balanced article, believe it or not:

http://post-gazette.com/pg/04243/370076.stm

Then again, this is the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which is somewhat unbiased anyway, compared to the evil Trib.

EDIT- they put the numbers at 100,000 protesters and 100 arrests, but still the same ratio.

RE-EDIT- okay, maybe not so balanced, since the NYT is reporting 500,00. Screw it, my point is we Dems are pretty damn civil!

[Massacure]

5. 200 arrests is probably routine for New york.

[edhopper]

7. It's was closer to 500,000

I was there and the NY Times agrees with us that it was more like half a million. Let's not repeat the propaganda of shrinking the protest here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/politics/campaign/30protest.html

[Beware the Beast Man]

8. It wasn't my intention to "repeat the propaganda."

The point of my post is to show the low number of arrests in relation to the amount that showed up, and how that number more than likely will be skewed up by the media.

[muchacho]

9. est 500,000

as reported in the New York Times this morning.

[Frodo]

10. Why? Because nobody has a clue how many are there.

Just about every protest march in history has had WIDELY varying estimates of how many people showed up. Organizers say they planned for up to 250k and 400k to 500k showed up. Opponents will say "thousands". CNN says "tens of thousands".

Police tend not to give crowd estimates anymore - they always get accused of partisanship because of course there aren't 500k people there. In fact, few marches like this even get to the numbers organizers plan for - so if the cops say "100-150k" the organizers throw a fit (there have been lawsuits).

So why not just say "lots and lots"?

[Beware the Beast Man]

11. "Shitload" doesn't look good in print.

:P

[edhopper]

12. Sorry but

they have no problem claiming 2 million in NY on New Years Eve, or 500,000 at a Garth Brooks concert in Central Park. I've been in big crowds here in NY, 500,000 seems right yesterday. And, the same group gave accurate numbers in their past protests.

[Frodo]

13. It was a nice way to say "they lie".

I remember the aerial photos of the "million man march" in '95 and the fight that went on over how many people showed up. The police had photos of a million people on the mall for a ticketed event (an actual count of attendees - probably a beach boy concert or fourth of July event) and the march had considerable fewer people (The park police estimated 400k while organizers claimed over a million - some said quite a bit more). The fight over that count caused the park police to stop making estimates of crowds. Then came the 2000 March which the local media said was "considerably smaller than" the MMM (and photos bore that out) but Farrakhan insisted there were over a million people there again.


In short, there could be anywhere from 50k to 500k there in NY today.

But wouldn't 50k be significant?

[lostnfound]

14. Bogus ones at that -- Orange nets swiftly wrapped around groups of people

On DN! today,they showed video of how a group would get encapsulated in orange net in a very fast maneuvre..no order to disperse, no reason for it.

A DN! reporter was caught up in a bike bloc arrest.

To see Amy G & Jeremy talk about it is very convincing. I highly recommend WATCHING -- not just listening -- to DN!'s coverage today.