“So much for the ’self-correcting’ blogosphere”?

Lessee:

-Roger Simon puts up a number.

-You dispute it.

-The reader (such as myself) sees both Roger’s claimed number, and your dispute, not to mention several other commenters’ references and links to other sources, as well as an explanation by Roger as to where he got the number from.

What, exactly, merited the scare quotes for “self-correcting”? Are you equating “self-correcting” with “never makes a mistake”? If so, I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Or are you suggesting that deleting information, as various media outlets have been wont to do, w/o even a mention that it had done so is somehow a superior versoin of “self-correcting”?

The lowest estimate is the 20,000 given by one British police source, although others say 45,000.

So much for the “self correcting” blogosphere.

I would like to know too why Roger assumes that figures cited are inflated. A little basic research shows that this is dubious assumption.

Anyway, the BBC cited the official police figure of 45,000 and also said that the organisers believed it was higher. That is fair enough.

So, why should we believe Roger from Hollywood’s unsourced figure of 10,000 over the British police or the BBC? Oh right, its just the Evil MSM right?

Maybe they should try something new, like say just a good old plain America sucks march or something.

As far as I know, the 45,000 figure is the police estimate. The 20,000 figure I gave came up during an interview on Sky News with a police official. I don’t think you can do much better. One can conclude, based simply on the wild variations in the estimates, that crowd size numbers are pretty unreliable. The estimates also tend to follow political convenience, as you can well imagine; I don’t think anyone actually goes out and counts a large crowd to check the figures. So perhaps the best one can do in a case like this is simply compare to the crowd two years ago and note a trend.

All the news sites I can see say about 45,000 for London. Can anyone send me to a reliable source about current estimates? In particular, Roger, what are the sources you say “further reveal” only about 10,000 participated.

Thanks.

but their reporter just said his police source had admitted that even that was a “generous” figure and that the real amount is about 20,000.

We can argue the numbers, but the point is, the numbers are smaller.

The organisers estimate more.

Harry, I’ve seen demonstrations for 38 years. The demonstrators always count more. To be left is to be innumerate. One, a million, murders or demonstrators, it’s all the same to them. Anyway, history moves on, the current fascist fads of the left will fade, and next year they can build on this years momentum and demonstrate about genmod peanuts or some such.

The organisers estimate more.

Anyway, I think I trust the police in London over Roger in Hollywood.