By Hilary White
OTTAWA, May 17, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In previous years, pro-life attendees at the annual March for Life in Ottawa have been disappointed to see the numbers of those at the march minimized by a largely pro-abortion news media playing down the importance of the event.
But with the advent of so-called ‘citizen journalism’ and such popular websites as YouTube, bloggers are pushing news media towards greater accountability. This year, the mostly under-thirty crowd of 7000 was filmed with hand-held cameras and cell phones and the digital videos were posted to the internet, making it impossible even for such diehard pro-abortion mainstream news outlets as the CBC to ignore.
Mis-reporting of the size of pro-life events by Canada’s news media has become axiomatic in pro-life circles. In 2005, a rally on Parliament hill to support natural marriage drew an estimated 15-20,000 attendees. Most Canadian news outlets reported it at 4000.
Coverage of the March for Life this year in the mainstream media reported the crowd from a few hundred to 3000. The reporting is so uniformly inaccurate, that organizers began several years ago to make a meticulous headcount to obtain accurate numbers.
Blogger and social conservative political activist John Pacheco at the blog “So-Con or Bust” wrote of the disgust of most pro-life Canadians with the apparently deliberate blackout regularly afforded the March and other pro-life events.
Calling it “shameful”, Pacheco wrote, “Here we go again.”
“Sooner or later,” Pacheco wrote, “whether they realize it or not, the MSM’s editors and news reporters are going to be the object of scorn and derision (that) future generations will heap on what our illuminated ones like to call ‘journalism’.”
He called on bloggers and others at the event to record the march and post the videos on the hugely popular website, YouTube and to their own sites.
The result is a series of videos showing the crowd unquestionably to be at several times the 1500 estimated by the CBC and the young age of the great majority of the marchers.
Watch the videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbzUAGbkCHg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ0e0xYaigU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T51voUd4SOE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysdjQLj-PRI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWH14ljM1BM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8KTxx4Ru4g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td03lVHVW7E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mlCkEXi9fU
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Mainstream Media Ignores, Falsifies Canadian March for Life Attendance
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/may/07051510.html
National Post Corrects Erroneous Reporting of Crowd Size at Marriage Rally
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/may/05050105.html