The city of Lodi, California has 100,000 inhabitants (as you can see from the aerial photograph); and those homes in the photograph of Lodi have several people in them (that is, the crowd would be bigger than what you see in the picture of Lodi if people stood on the street at the same time). Now that you have a feel for what 100,000 strong crowd of people looks like from the air, the point is clear: The notion that “100,000 people” attended the MEK rally — as featured on the front page of Iranian.com — is a falsification. Were a couple thousand people there? Yes. 100,000? Absolutely not. Double the size of the Super Bowl attended this group’s speech? Oh really? The only question for Iranian.com — which has presented the false and bloated figure on the front page of its website — is whether Iranian.com can quickly produce a source for it to show that another media source made an error and Iranian.com negligently allowed the falsification to be reprinted as fact. (1) If you have a source for the 100,000 size of the crowd claimed, you print it. It will not change that the figure is still false; at best it just shows that make-believe is presented as reality without editorial scrutiny. (2) However, if you do not have a source, it is standard practice to print a retraction to summarize your reasons for publishing falsehoods and not checking sources. It is common knowledge that falsified and exaggerated figures are often presented on behalf of groups seeking recruits; Groups and their propagandists commonly do this to give the outward appearance that the group enjoys more popularity than their actual smaller number of supporters. Let’s be clear: this website is publishing a common form of recruiting propaganda on the front page. It’s up to Iranian.com to show the public that this is not being done deliberately because the logical inference presently is that it is. You can always overcome that by addressing facts.
