Inauguration Day - My public thoughts

[GMDino]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sean-spicer-media-coverage-inauguration-crowd/

Quote:White House press secretary Sean Spicer came to the briefing room Saturday to chastise journalists for their coverage of attendance at Donald Trump’s inauguration, before leaving without taking any questions.


“Some members of the media were engaged in deliberately false reporting,” Spicer said, calling out two examples on Twitter of “inaccurate numbers involving crowd size” as well as reporting from a Time magazine journalist that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the White House. 


Of crowd size estimates, Spicer said “no one had numbers...because the National Park Service” does not put any out.” 


Despite the lack of numbers just cited, Spicer went on to assert “this was the largest audience to ever witness the inauguration period both in person and around the globe.”

Earlier in the day, President Trump complained at an appearance at the CIA about network coverage suggesting that his crowds were thin.

“I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field. I said, ‘Wait a minute, I made a speech,’ I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people,” he told CIA staffers at a visit to Langley Saturday. “They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there, and they said Donald Trump did not draw well.”

Play VIDEO
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Highlights from President Donald Trump's inauguration
[url=http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/highlights-from-president-donald-trumps-inauguration]
“It looked honestly, it looked like a million and a half people, whatever it was, it was, but it went all the way back to Washington
Monument,” Mr. Trump added. He took umbrage at some media coverage that suggested much lower numbers. “I get this network and it showed an empty field,” he marvelled. “And it said we drew 250,000 people, now that’s not bad but it’s a lie.”  Mr. Trump claimed “the 20 block area all the way back to the Washington Monument was packed.”

Media coverage of the inauguration crowds relied on aerial photos of the two addresses from the opposite end of the national mall to draw comparisons, with Obama’s 2009 inauguration apparently drawing much denser crowds. Spicer made no reference of aerial photos in the briefing, using instead two photographs from behind the Capitol, an angle from which the disparity is not as clear. 

Speaking to CBSN after Spicer’s statement, CBS senior White House correspondent Major Garrett said: “It is quite clear that this administration will make whatever representations it wants to on its impression and interpretation of the news and drive that right back at the news media if it thinks it is being unfair or inflicting damage on the image this White House wants to display.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this where it was so intense, so harsh and passionate right off the beginning,” said Garrett,  “So much of it was about what the media got wrong from the interpretation of this White House and a declaration that this antagonism is going to continue because this president feels duty-bound, on behalf of this movement that Sean Spicer spoke about, to speak beyond the media and criticise it whenever he is justified in doing so.”

A combination of photos taken at the National Mall shows the crowds attending the inauguration ceremonies to swear in U.S. President Donald Trump at 12:01pm (L) on January 20, 2017 and President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, in Washington, DC, U.S. 

 REUTERS/LUCAS JACKSON (L), STELIOS VARIAS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTSWJVI

Friday evening, the National Park Service was ordered by the Interior Department to cease tweeting after a staffer retweeted a reporter’s comment on the sparser crowds that appeared to attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

About 30.6 million people watched the inauguration, according to the Nielsen ratings, a smaller number than the 38 million who watched Obama’s first inauguration in 2009.

He said:

Quote: Spicer went on to assert “this was the largest audience to ever witness the inauguration period both in person and around the globe.”

That's what we used to call a "lie".