The media is going full out to make us think that Obama is winning. Even to the extent of "reporting" that Obama spoke to a crowd of 18,000 in a stadium that held 5,000 people ... and wasn't full.
President Barack Obama is having trouble drawing large crowds on the campaign trail. At the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, his campaign was forced to move his acceptance speech from the 74,000-seat Bank of America Stadium to the 20,000 Time Warner Cable Arena, citing weather as the excuse. But the media are always eager to help--for example, putting 18,000 people inside a 5,000-seat arena at an Obama event in Milwaukee on Saturday. ...The pavilion was not "filled"--a local reporter for Patch.com filmed empty seats in the bleachers at the side of the arena (see above). Nevertheless, the Journal-Sentinal played it safe, putting attendance at roughly 5,000-plus, a small but respectable turnout.
That's not how national media covered it. Darren Samuelsohn of Politico reported that the president addressed "a crowd the Obama campaign estimated at 18,000 in a city park overlooking Lake Michigan" in an attempt to "lock up" Wisconsin.
Laura Meckler of the Wall Street Journal--whose news section, according to UCLA professor Tim Groseclose, is the most liberal of any major mainstream outlet--repeated the campaign's 18,000 claim without even revealing the source of the official-sounding estimate.
Both outlets described the location of the rally as a "park," without revealing the name of the arena itself, which would have given the game away.
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