Estimating the numbers of people who take part in big political gatherings is never an exact science, but it’s important to try to get the best “ballpark figure” available.
As far as I can see, almost no-one in the mainstream media did anything to estimate the number of people taking part in Moqtada Sadr’s “big” anti-occupation demonstration in central Baghdad yesterday. I checked many, many news sources for a figure today. All except one stuck with the highly non-specific “ten of thousands” figure.
Okay, guys, so how many ten of thousands? It must have been more than “one”. So what was it– two? three? twenty? fifty?
The only report I found that was more specific than that was this report, from the LA Times’s Edmund Sanders in Baghdad, which said,
- Carrying banners that read “Go Out” and “Leave Our Country,” marchers hit the streets early Saturday, blocking roads and causing traffic jams around the capital. Most of the protesters came from the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, but busloads arrived from Kut, Amarah, Baqubah and other cities. Some estimates put the number of protesters at 300,000.
(Hat-tip to Juan for that link.)
That would make it “thirty” tens of thousands, if you do the math.
I wish, though, that Sanders had been more specific about the nature of the “sources” from which he got those estimates. Were they strongly pro-Sadrist sources? Were they sources close to the US or emerging Iraqi military? I think that matters.
I should imagine the US military were counting the crowd more closely than anyone else. Journos on the spot and in the Pentagon should demand to know what the military’s estimate of the number was. This does matter. It’s an important political fact. And if the US military has counted (or given their best estimate for) the number, that figure should be released as public knowledge, together with a description of their methodology.
Okay, here’s my best attempt and my methodology, doing the job from 7,000 miles away. I looked at these photos of the demonstration, and read various news reports that said that Firdaws Square was full and there were additional people standing on side streets as well. (You can kind of see the square being full from those photos… Unlike on April 9, 2003…) I reckon you couldn’t fill Firdaws Square at that apparent density of people with less than around 80,000 people. So as a very first estimate I’d say it’s very extremely likely that that one demonstration had over 100,000 people in it.
Plus, there were additional demonstrations– apparently smaller– in (at least) Ramadi and Najaf.
As I said, counting crowds an inexact science– especially for me, since I’m so far away and don’t have access to surveillance choppers or drones, such as the US military has there all the time.
Wire service reporters etc there in Baghdad presumably had access to many more photos than the handful I could look at. Plus, perhaps they could have gone to the rally themselves???
I don’t think that’s asking too much of them. Or, as a substitute for that if they were truly scared to, they could have sent some of the Iraqi reporters who, let’s face it, do nearly all the truly valuable reporting and cultural negotiation work there on contract for the western media, and get paid only a tiny proportion of the money that the “big” Western media honchos get.
But no. Nearly all the Baghdad-based reporters seemed to stick with not going to the demonstration, and endlessly parroting the same, highly misleading figure of “tens of thousands” of participants.
Get your boots on the ground, guys. Also, ask the US military for their estimate. Just parroting “ten of thousands” is a truly lousy reporting job.
I agree with you that it is incumbent upon journalists to obtain better information about the size of the demonstrations. Since the vast majority of them spend their time sitting in the green zone waiting to be told by occupation authorities what to report, it should be easy for them to obtain the U.S. occupation forces’s estimate. However, the likelihood of getting a realistic, as opposed to a politically motivated answer seems to me pretty slim. Still, if we know the source, we can evaluate it accordingly.
It is noteworthy that all the headlines I saw on yesterday’s demonstration said “thousands” had demonstrated. It was not until you got into the article or the report itself that they said “tens of thousands”.
It seems to me that “official” sources tend to consistently understimate the size of demonstrations opposing the government or its actions, and the good old U.S. media willingly go right along. I remember the reports of the anti-invasion demonstrations I participated in. The first one was huge beyond my wildest dreams. I wept when I saw the size of the crowd because I really had no idea so many people cared. It went for blocks and blocks and blocks and when we arrived at the destination, completely filled an area about the size of Firdos square, or perhaps a bit bigger, and was so tightly packed that you could hardly get through the crowd at times, yet the official estimates published by the press were 25,000 or so. Later one police spokesman admitted it was closer to 50,000. The next one was at least half again as large, filled the area of the first, densely packed the four streets surrounding the square, and spilled for at least a block or two into the nearby streets. The officially reported number? 30-40,000.
Talking about the media, I would like to see SOMEONE get the data on the ‘compensations’ paid to Iraqis who had property damaged or loved ones who died…. and report on that! No danger involved in doing that.
I also wonder when we will see what was done to Fallujah.
On the topic of demonstrations, I wish they would hold a “pro-US” demonstration in Iraq and see how many show up for that. I would want that one to be safe and non-violent also.
Susan, we are unlikely to see anything as blatant as a “pro-U.S.” demonstration in Iraq. There have been a few “anti-terrorism” demonstrations, which were clearly pure P.R. efforts on the part of the Bush administration. I don’t recall specifically who organized them, but it was `Allawi’s group or some other well-known U.S.-sponsored entity. They were moderate in size as I recall, not particularly impressive.
It is, of course, possible that more people would have attended had they not been afraid of being attacked by terrorists. On the other hand, to the best of my knowledge the only attacks on demonstrations so far have been by U.S. forces, who have killed over a hundred unarmed demonstrators that we know of (and probably a number of other unreported cases from much smaller demonstrations), and wounded many more than that.
While we are all interested in the numbers of people who show up at demonstrations, we must remember that these numbers are always manipulated by the various medi. Before the event headlines can bring out the crowds or scare them away (“Police gird for violence” vs “Peaceful demonstration expected”). After the event, the crowd-counting is always manipulated by both sides.
And we must also remember the huge rallies that Hitler had at Nurenburg. Even the biggest crowd can be wrong. Worse, they can be wrong even if you agree with them.
Let’s try to remember how long it took the big crowds at Nurenburg to understand they were wrong — and what happened before they finally did.
What is your point, Bill Fisher? How does what you said relate to this topic? Are you suggesting that the demonstrators are like the crowds at Nurenberg?
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