ABC News Was Misquoted on Crowd Size

Conservative activists, who organized a march on the U.S. Capitol today in protest of the Obama administration's health care agenda and government spending, erroneously attributed reports on the size of the crowds to ABC News.

A crowd of people, some carrying signs, are shown during a rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington on...

A crowd of people, some carrying signs, are shown during a rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009. Thousands of protesters have packed streets in the nation's capital to protest what they consider the federal government's out-of-control spending.

(Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo)

Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event, said on stage at the rally Saturday that ABC News was reporting that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance.

At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number anywhere near as large. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. In its reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as "tens of thousands."

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Brendan Steinhauser, spokesman for FreedomWorks, said he did not know why Kibbe cited ABC News as a source.

As a result of Kibbe's erroneous attribution, several bloggers and commenters repeated the misinformation.

In his blog, Kibbe apologized Sunday for the mistaken attribution of the crowd-size estimated to ABC News.

"With a dead IPhone, I had been shown tweets from a number of different folks behind the stage citing the ABC estimate," he wrote. "They didn't say it. I regret misrepresenting the network, as their coverage that day was fair and honest."