Why aren crowd counts always a part of stories about marches and protests?
Accurately counting the size of a large crowd is a very difficult endeavor, best done from an aerial viewpoint using a grid system. That is rarely done. Instead, officials or organizers of demonstrations often estimate. Those guesses tend to be heavily influenced by what they would like to believe. Organizers almost always think the crowd is larger; officials who oppose whatever a march or protest is about almost always think it’s smaller. That doesn’t mean they are deliberately dishonest, just that every person’s perceptions are heavily influenced by their desires. Unless someone has done a real count, it’s often preferable to describe crowd size only in general terms, or to use geographical points of reference such as how long the parade route stretched, “three blocks down Grand Avenue,” “filling the plaza,” etc.
