The internals of the two reports are essentially identical, as you note, except for the numbers of those reported to be protesting outside the NRA rally, as Larry brought to our attention. Tom has rightly added that CBS credits the AP: "The Associated Press contributed to this report."

Yes, they "contributed" everything except the numbers of protesters.

AP: "Three people protested outside. "
CBS: "A few dozen people protested outside."

Larry claims this discrepancy proves that eyewitness estimates of crowd size are unreliable. Maybe so, but I'd like to know how anyone who can count could confuse three people with a few dozen.

And this seemingly simple discrepancy certainly raises some questions in my mind about the reporting practices of our major news bureaus.

So apparently CBS sent their own reporter to cover the rally, but used everything from the AP report except for the number of people who gathered to protest. On the surface at least, I guess we should be thankful that a major network like CBS can afford to send reporters all over the country to do nothing more than double-check the crowd estimates of the AP, and insert their own totals, where appropriate.

There are at least three possibilities here:

1. The AP report should have said "three dozen". (Simple inadvertant exclusion of a single word.)

2. The two news bureaus had their reporters there at different times, when the number of protesters was different.. (Shoddy, misleading reporting practices.)

3. Somebody at AP or CBS fudged the numbers. (This amounts to lying.)

None of this makes Larry's point, imo, but it has raised others.

sp