"Obama dazzles over 200,000 in Berlin"

Anyone who has seen the photos of Obama's speech is left wondering - how in the world do CNN and MSNBC keep guestimating the numbers at 'around 100,000'?

It looks like a heck of a lot more than that to me.

So I did a quick Google search for articles about Obama's speech in German newspapers... and guess what?

The Link, which bills itself as a German newspaper in English counts a couple more Obama fans than that:

Obama dazzles over 200,000 in Berlin

Over 200,000 jubilant Barack Obama supporters shut down the centre of Berlin on Thursday evening to listen to the US presidential candidate give a major foreign policy speech.

People from all walks of life streamed to the German capital’s Victory Column memorial at the heart of the city’s Tiergarten park hoping to glimpse of the popular US senator from Illinois.

"Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany," Obama told the crowd to wild applause. "Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world."

As the sun set on the German capital, Berliners listened intently to Obama speak of the common challenges facing Europe and America in the 21st century.

Imagine that.

•  Tips for fuzzy math?

  by FLDem5 on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:45:14 AM PDT

  •  Reminds me of

    One of the Iraq War protests.

    Like the one we had in NYC that 3-4million people tried to attend (NYPD made it plenty difficult)

    According to For-Profit Media, we had about 100,000

    odd how they keep misunderstimating us!

    by interdependence on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:07:50 PM PDT

    •  very odd, indeed.

      by FLDem5 on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:15:23 PM PDT

  •  The Berlin police are reporting 200,000

    according to Die Zeit.

    by psericks on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:28:49 PM PDT

  •  Warm and fuzzy. Just how I like my math. nt

    by AxmxZ on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:45:08 PM PDT

•  Meanwhile, John McCain...

  gives a monologue in lederhausen in front of a wiener haus in German Town, Ohio where he is upstaged by a chorus of enthusastic wind chimes.

  by David Kroning on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:47:43 AM PDT

  •  Yeah, but there were at least three dozen

    folks in attendance.

    by Gary Norton on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:49:01 AM PDT

    •  Were these 3 dozen

      actually watching McCain or just getting some good sausage?

      by yg17 on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:51:04 AM PDT

      •  Who's the old guy...

        ...hogging up all the sausages??

        by ultrageek on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:54:04 AM PDT

    •  Well, only if you count

      the cashiers and janitorial staff.

      by banjolele on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:51:13 AM PDT

    •  not to mention the record crowd at the market

      by FLDem5 on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:51:21 AM PDT

  •  Chuck Todd was right--McCain should have just sat

    this week out.  
    How foolish he looks!

    by Phil S 33 on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:13:48 PM PDT

  •  Schmidt's - You'll come for the Weiners

    And get bit by the spicy Bahama Mamas.

    Maybe McCain gor burned twice in one day.

    by ItsSimpleSimon on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:45:37 PM PDT

•  To be honest, I thought the crowd was smaller ...

  ... but the first pictures I saw made it hard to guess from the scale of the landscape and the length of the street extending into the background.

  If the German journos say 200,000, I would tend to trust their estimates of the size of the audience.

  by philimus on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:48:56 AM PDT

  •  That road was full for a mile

    That would be 1600 m....thats a long way!

    by Mikecan1978 on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:51:07 AM PDT

•  It seemed to me that no news pundits wanted

  to give the crowd size. I kept hearing "tens of thousands" no matter which network I had on. I also thought CNN and CNN International kept the shots close so one could not see the depth of the crowd.

  by paige on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:51:14 AM PDT

  •  the shots on CSPAN3 made me wonder

    I figured they'd say a quarter mil, and they kept downplaying the numbers. In fact, what got me Googling was a snip I saw on CNN, an anchor said 'a couple hundred thousand' and that was very quickly corrected on-air to 'around 100,000'. It made me a tad suspicious. Why was the number downsized so quickly.

    by FLDem5 on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:53:33 AM PDT

•  We fit more than 70k into just one of two MD

  appearances on the very same day (this being the College Park appearance, the Baltimore one being only some five hours later). I suspect that all of Germany did break 100k by a very comfortable margin.

  by fearwig on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:54:09 AM PDT

•  It's Irrelevent

  It was televised.

  It was millions glued to the TV for 15 minutes.

  How many people were standing in the landscape is belly button lint.

  by Detroit Mark on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:55:38 AM PDT

•  Meanwhile the RWSM...

  is already conveniently leaving off the part...about being a "Proud citizen of the United States" and going right to the "fellow citizen of the world"

  I guess that is just an editing "mistake".../snark

  by dvogel001 on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:56:32 AM PDT

•  And here is FoxNews biggest headline...

  while Obama is doing a historic speech...

  http://www.foxnews.com/...

  No Obama Bounce  (according to a FoxNews Poll)

  by dvogel001 on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:58:44 AM PDT

  •  They mad cause Obama kicked them off his plane

    LOL

    by DFutureIsNow on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:43:19 PM PDT

•  David Shuster on MSNBC

  just reported that at least 200,000 people came to hear Obama's speech.

  by Jezreel on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:02:50 PM PDT

  •  215,000 according to right-wing Die Welt:

    215.000 Menschen bejubeln Barack Obama.

    by lysias on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:14:29 PM PDT

•  I've seen it happen repeatedly

  The news media has usually--and often wildly--underestimated crowd attendance at gay pride events. Evidence of conservative bias? Perhaps. Or maybe they just never learned to count. ;)

  by slksfca on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:54:04 PM PDT

  •  Yes,

    That's what I was thinking of, too. March on Washington, 1993. Washington Post said there were two leather men, a drag queen, five hairy lesbians in flannel, and lots and lots of mirrors.
    ;-)

    by LaKathie on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 01:37:26 PM PDT