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What we can do: Bombard AP with phone calls and emails: 1-212-621-1670; Karen Matthews (the reporter) – kmatthews@ap.org.

January 12, 2009

In News

What the AP means when it says “150?

01.12.2009 | The Saif House
By saifedean

The Associated Press is full of crap.

Note that in this footage the camera cannot show both the beginning and the end of the demonstration. Even at this height, the demo was too long to be caught in one frame. Also note that all the crowd that appears around the 00:20 mark is different from the crowd that appears at the 1:10 mark, since the first crowd had two giant Palestinian flags spread on top of it and the second group doesn’t. These are two ends of the demonstrations, not the same crowd pictured again.

I was at the front of the march when we turned on 58th street. I stopped on the sidewalk to chat with police and to examine the crowd. It took the back of the demo some 20-30 minutes to get to the corner of 58th after the front had reached it.

The crowd really was massive.

I spoke to Karen Matthews (the AP writer who wrote their story) today, who claimed there were only dozens when she left. Apparently she left before the rally started, and she didn’t expect that the numbers would grow. This is quite remarkable incompetence, even by the standards of the American media.

Now the AP have stopped talking to me or anyone calling them, and seem to have decided to ignore this.

Please continue to call them on +1-212-621-1670, email them on info@ap.org and email Karen Matthews at kmatthews@ap.org

At the very least, we have an obligation to make their next few days miserable with phone calls and emails so they think twice before pulling off such a hoax again.

And here are some pictures of the demonstration, all taken by Noel Winkler:

[Thanks to Randa, Charlotte, Noel, Nadia and Raja for providing pics and video]