One Million Turn Out For Pope Installation! -Or Is It 10,000?

Big difference. You'd think the bourgeois media could get their stories straight. Maybe they need to conspire together more.

That is literally the range of numbers announced on different radio outlets this morning.

NPR, 5:30 am (all times EST): “...thrilled, tens of thousands of people gathered for his installation Mass, taking a winding route...”

Minutes later, Aljazeera at 5:37 am- ”Now this is the scene in St. Peter's Square where world leaders and up to a million pilgrims are expected.” (Note the trapdoor qualifiers, "up to" and "are expected." Expected by whom? The guy in the Vatican press office giving the press handouts?)

But is it fair to call Aljazeera "bourgeois" media? Ok, how about "bourgeois and oil plutocrat media"?

WINS 9:30 am ; “An estimated one million people turned out” for Pope ritual. Estimated by who exactly?

Then yet another billionaire's media, this one owned by Michael Billionaire Bloomberg, WBBR, 9:39 am: “Up to 200,000” people at the Pope ritual, reports Jon Bascom. (I like that weaselly qualifier, "up to." Sounds like those promises of connection speeds from phone, cable, satellite, and ISP companies.) But he's based in D.C., so he might not have even been there.

Given the narrow streets there, I'm gonna guess tens of thousands. Low tens of thousands. It reminds me of the "Salute To Israel Day" parades in New York City. I'd go to them and observe about five to ten thousand people, and the media would claim one million, obviously fraudulent. (Lately they've stopped that game.)

So here's a Muslim-owned channel and a Jewish-owned one (WINS) both shilling for the Roman Catholic Church! Guess they're doing it out of brotherly love.

Or maybe authoritarian capitalists stick together.

Addendum: the self-appointed "newspaper of record," the NY Times, says "The Vatican estimated the number at 150,000 to 200,000."* Which no doubt is a gross exaggeration. Don't know why radio broadcasters can't mention where they get their numbers from. And notice that WINS and Aljazeera both multiplied the Vatican's high end number five times, to one million! They're outshilling the Vatican itself! And they aren't even Catholic!

*"Pope Francis Calls for Service to ‘Poorest, Weakest’" NY Times, 3/19/13. Ugh, that fucking Vatican propaganda right in the headline! No link here, it was just junk. See "Meet The New Pope, Same As The Old Pope," for analysis of how sick this Vatican propaganda offensive is.