The BBC is on the march with selective statistics
Charles Moore
23 January 2017
The Telegraph
158 Comments
A combination of photos taken at the National Mall shows the crowds attending the inauguration ceremonies to swear in U.S. President Donald Trump (left) on 20 January 2017, and President Barack Obama (right) on 20 January 2009 Credit: Reuters
I am looking at the top line of the BBC News website. It carries a story about the numbers who attended Donald Trump’s inauguration and the protests against him.
It quotes Mr Trump
saying that 1.5 million people watched him in Washington, and his press secretary Sean Spicer speaking of “the largest audience ever to see an inauguration”.
“Neither man has produced evidence to back their claims,” says the BBC, displaying comparative photographs of the first Obama inauguration and of Mr Trump’s, to the latter’s disadvantage.
This is its next paragraph: “On Saturday, millions in the US and around the world took part in protests to highlight women’s rights, which activists believe to be under threat from the new administration.”
I bet the BBC is right that Mr Trump is wrong: he tends to multiply almost every statistic he deploys.
The White House press secretary could also be right, however, when he said (which the BBC did not highlight) that this was “the largest number ever to witness an inauguration both in person and around the globe”.
My question, though, is why the BBC does not also challenge
the figures for all those protesting women. Any reporter knows that the organisers of political crowds generally exaggerate their numbers, often by a multiple of ten. President Trump is only one such exaggerator.
The sole really large march in recent years which had a proper counting system was the Countryside march in London in 2002. It was attended by 404,000. Most big marches are much, much smaller than that.
The truest report of Saturday’s events would have said: “Mr Trump’s inauguration and the protests against him were attended by many fewer people than their respective organisers claimed.” But that would not have satisfied the BBC.
The underlying purpose of its story is not to find the truth but to fire its latest shot in the war between Mr Trump and the mainstream media. To back up its line, the BBC invoked The New York Times, CNN and ABC, which also attacked the Trump claims.
Its website report added: “Pro-Trump Fox News reported the claims unchallenged.” It did not say that all the media it cited in support are vehemently anti-Trump. Nor, naturally, did it add, “Anti-Trump BBC reported the women’s marches’ claims unchallenged.”
The BBC is on the march with selective statistics