2 Million Teabaggers Myth

I was confronted again today with the myth of the 2 million teabagger rally in DC from last year.  I sat down to write up a scathing debunking, again, of the claim, but discovered others had already beaten me to the punch and done so very well.  Here is Brendan Nyhan:

Chris Orr beat me to the metaphor, but has there ever been a more absurd game of political Telephone than the way the two million protestors myth was created and propagated online?

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters documents the carnage:

The conservative comedy of errors began on Saturday when Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, took to the rally stage and unfurled a massive lie. He told the crowd ABC News had reported that between 1 million to 1.5 million people had gathered to protest Obama's policies. (Later, a FreedomWorks flackconceded she had no idea know why Kibbe manufactured the claim about ABC News.)

Immediately, conservative activist Tabitha Hale (aka "pinkelephantpun") tweeted Kibbe's lie but added an additional 500,000 people to the tally: "ABC reporting 2 million people."

Seven minutes later, Malkin re-tweeted Hale's claim. Then, one minute after that, Malkin turned that tweetinto part of her ongoing protest coverage. Intrepid "reporter" Malkin took an unsupported tweet and reported it as news:

12:34pm Eastern: Police estimate 1.2 million in attendance. ABC News reporting crowd at 2 million -- tweets Tabitha Hale from D.C.

Teeny, tiny fringe, huh?

Note that in her blog post there were no links for Malkin's utterly fantastic claim, no place on the Web where readers could go and confirm that D.C. police had pegged the crowd at 1.2 million or that ABC had made the staggering claim of 2 million. The lack of live links should have been a massive red flag for readers and fellow bloggers, especially when it was associated with such a controversial and news-breaking claim.

But, of course, Malkin had no links or any real facts to go on. All she had was a couple of tweets from Hale, who, in retrospect, appeared to have spent much of Saturday just making shit up.

But again, none of that mattered, because Malkin had spoken (2 million!) and the right-wing bloggers knew what to do. Let's take a stroll through the far-right blogosphere and see which sites did their best to spread Malkin's patently absurd claim about 2 million protesters. [Emphasis added.]

Pajamas Media's Roger Simon:

I can remember telling Glenn Reynolds during CPAC that these Tea Party demonstrations were rinky-dink and going nowhere. Barely more than a half-year later, they're putting two million people on the Washington Mall. Wow!

Jawa Report:

UPDATE:(Newbie): Crowd estimated by ABC NEWS: 2 MILLION!

Looking at the Left:

ABC News reports that two million Americans flooded D.C. in what people in the crowd were calling "a conservative Woodstock" Like the liberal Woodstock of the '60s, thousands were rumored stranded on freeways.

Atlas Shrugs:

The two photos above show a tiny fraction of the two million ABC estimates attended.

NewsBusters, the day after the 2 million people story had been debunked:

You'll note no mention of the D.C. rallyyesterday that drew an estimated 1-2 million people.

Wizbang:

Michelle Malkin reported on her site thatABC News estimated the crowd to be 2 million people.

[...]

Rick at Brutally Honest linked to this awesome time lapse video showing progression of the approximately 2 million people who marched in DC today:

Riehl World View:

ABC Reports 2 Million At DC Rally

Right Pundits:

Michelle Malkin is reporting that estimated turnout is now 2 million people.

And then there was the sad, confused work of blogger Stephen Green. Doing his best to spread the word about the supposedly massive crowd size on Saturday, Green first claimed that CNN had reported the crowd was 2 million strong. (CNN never did any such thing.) Then later under a banner that read "correction," Green, following Malkin's phony lead, reported it was ABC News that reported 2 million protesters were on hand. (Green then failed to correct his "correction.")

Of course, the 2 million tally never made sense. Not only couldn't anybody find ABC's alleged reporting, but no other news organization (not even rally co-sponsor Fox News) were going anywhere near the 2 million mark. Instead, most of Saturday's reports used phrases like "tens of thousands" to describe the crowd size.

Just after 4 p.m. Saturday, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen tweeted the glaring discrepancy:

http://michellemalkin.com/: "ABC News reporting crowd at 2 million." Front page, ABCNews.com: "thousands march on Capitol"

By the end of that 4 o'clock hour, ABC's News' Yunji de Nies also weighed in:



Later that afternoon, ABC News took the unusual stepof reporting an article about itself. Headlined "ABC News Was Misquoted on Crowd Size," the dispatch, designed solely to knock down the false rumor that Malkin helped hype, was quite emphatic:

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."

Finally, near day's end, Malkin finally addressed her bogus ABC News claim and pointed the finger of blame at FreedomWorks' Kibbe. (He's the one who first mentioned ABC News.) Malkin then thanked ABC News for "clearing this up," without noting that "this" was launched when Malkin broadcast a completely fictitious claim without the slightest hint of attribution and then waited most of the day to acknowledge her colossal blunder. And note that Malkin blamed Kibbe because Kibbe told the rally that ABC News had estimated the crowd to be between 1 million and 1.5 million. But Malkin told the world ABC News had claimed it was 2 million. So how was that Kibbe's fault?

Post-protest, some conservatives, such as Instapundit, still tried to push the phony 2 million claim by clinging to a typically awful and unsubstantiatedarticle from the British press that originally suggested "up to two million people" marched on Washington. The article, though, lacked any sourcing. It was just another case of the British press regurgitating a right-wing lie. (The article was later changed to include an equally misleading claim: "As many as one million people flooded into Washington for a massive rally.")

By Saturday night, RedState blogger Erick Erickson, conceding the 2 million number was pure fantasy, did his best to clear up the confusion:

I've been talking all night to people who are there and involved. The 2 million number was generated by the media, but truly seems to be a gross inflation of what is there.

And with that we traveled full circle in the unstable world of the right-wing blogosphere. According to press-hating Erickson, it was the media that concocted the wildly inflated 2 million number. (ABC News again?) In the new, sanitized telling, Malkin's dirty hands, of course, had been completely washed and her leading role in the embarrassing charade had been forgotten and forgiven. Because at the end of the day,it was the media's fault all along.

Amazingly, as Boehlert later pointed out, the Los Angeles Times then framed the story as a "he said," "she said" debate in its headline and subhed:

Crowd estimates vary wildly for Capitol march
How many angry conservatives showed up to protest Obama's policies? Was it 2 million? Or 60,000? It all depends on whom you ask.

In the lede, the LAT noted crowd "estimates ranging from 60,000 to 2 million" before finally clarifying in the fourth paragraph that the actual turnout was under 100,000 people.

But that's not all! As Ben Dimiero pointed out on Media Matters,a new meme later circulated in which a quote was attributed to a National Park Service spokesperson saying the rally was the largest Washington march ever. The problem is that he was talking about the Obama inauguration:

Yesterday on his radio program, while discussing the crowds at this weekend's 9/12 protests, Glenn Beck claimed that the LondonTelegraph "quote[d] a source from the Park Service, the National Park Service, saying that it is the largest march on Washington ever."  This led to a good deal of confusion here, as the Telegraph article contains no such quote.  Just another case of Beck making things up?  Actually, the story behind this turns out to be much funnier than we could have anticipated.

Several conservative blogs have been quoting National Park Service spokesman "Dan Bana" as saying the 9/12 protest was "the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever."  This appears to be a repurposing of this quote from David Barna (who, unlike Dan Bana, appears to be a real person):

David Barna, a Park Service spokesman, said the agency did not conduct its own count. Instead, it will use a Washington Post account that said 1.8 million people gathered on the US Capitol grounds, National Mall, and parade route.

"It is a record," Barna said. "We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever."

Very impressive!  Unfortunately, as Little Green Footballs pointed out, that quote was actually about the inauguration:

This is so pathetic I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Dozens - if not hundreds - of right wing blogs are running with this quote, portraying it as a statement about the tea party held last weekend: 'We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever.'

The quote is from January. The National Park Service spokesman was talking about Barack Obama's inauguration.

When people said the Internet would revolutionize democracy, I don't think this is what they had in mind.

Update 9/16 2:22 PM: Broken links fixed (sorry about that).

Update 9/17 6:37 AM: Per David Smith's comment below, Glenn Reynolds was more skeptical of the two million figure than Boehlert's language suggests. He previously called it "improbably high" and wrote of the Daily Mail headline "So maybe I was wrong to be so skeptical. But cut it in half and it’s still a huge number."