Even MSM Doesn't Buy 'One Nation' Claim That 10/2 Rally Attendance Topped Beck's

You may have watched the clip of "One Nation" attendees being told that "satellite images" proved that their rally exceeded attendance at the "Restoring Honor" rally.

The Blaze survey of mainstream media reports finds a good deal of skepticism about such claims.

Let's check a few.

The New York Times:

Noting that they began planning their rally in April, organizers said they were not responding to a march organized by Glenn Beck, which drew enormous crowds to the front of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28. But they acknowledged that their hope was to draw an even larger crowd to Saturday’s event.

Significant areas of the National Mall that had been filled during Mr. Beck’s rally were empty. In a broadcast on Thursday, Mr. Beck criticized the liberals’ march, saying his supporters paid their own way to drive to Washington, while labor unions chartered hundreds of buses to ferry demonstrators to Saturday’s rally.

Associated Press:

Organizers claimed they had as many participants as Beck's rally. But Saturday's crowds were less dense and didn't reach as far to the edges as they did during Beck's rally. The National Park Service stopped providing official crowd estimates in the 1990s.

Washington Post:

More than 400 groups endorsed the "One Nation Working Together" rally, which organizers said drew a crowd of 175,000 people - about what they expected. Beck has estimated that 500,000 people came to his gathering. There are no official counts of crowds on the Mall, and the National Park Service no longer provides such estimates.

Politico:

Organizers said they were expecting more than 100,000 to attend the rally. Thousands of people packed the area around the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, but based on an unscientific estimate there were significantly fewer people than when Fox News’ Glenn Beck hosted the conservative “Restoring Honor” rally there Aug. 28. At that rally, attendees were forced to stand shoulder to shoulder the entire length of the Reflecting Pool.

ABC:

The crowd was large, but seemed smaller than the crowd at the Beck rally. Nevertheless, Schultz announced that he was told the crowd was bigger than at Restore Honor. The U.S. Park Police did not release an official estimate.

NPR:

Economic anxieties and fears that the nation was headed in the wrong direction were picked up by reporters who talked with some of the estimated 175,000, who attended according to organizers.  Of course, attendees at Saturday's "One Nation Working Together" event had a different analysis of the causes of the nation's problem than those who attended the much larger Beck rally.