Tim Marshall February 08, 2011 11:45 AM
Day after day many media outlets have consistently inflated the numbers of people protesting in Cairo's Tahrir Sq.
Some reporters may have been a little overexcited, some a little inexperienced, some nervous at being out of step with their peers, and a few may have been guilty of seeking a better headline .
The numbers in an uprising matter enormously. It is in the protesters interests to inflate numbers and for the state to downplay them. After all, both sides are claiming to represent the masses. Naturally this has happened in Egypt over the past two weeks. But it is not for the media to play that game.
I've received a degree online abuse for my estimates. To some anti Mubarak emailers/twitterers I was a 'counter revolutionary lackey', to others 'blind', and to some 'naive.' I admit my estimates may be wrong but I am certain the high end numbers reported are way off the mark.
I've been covering demonstrations and riots for twenty five years, and equally importantly, going to football matches for 40 years, and I am 100% convinced that at no point was there ever 2 million people in Tahrir Sq as one Arabic channel reported. Nor was there even 1 million - the figure to which they later downgraded their assessment.
I have been in a crowd of a million several times, for example when Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan, and in Kerbala a few days after the fall of Saddam when the Shia were allowed to worship in the manner of their choosing for the first time in thirty years. I know what a crowd of a million feels like from within, and looks like from above.
From within it is a seething mass. You are carried along by surges which ebb and flow. You are crushed into the people in front and behind you. Turning is almost impossible. Making your way from one side of the crowd to other is impossible. It is a frightening place to be. From above you see the density of people packed together and you cannot see concrete or grass as every inch of it is covered. A good example is the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini. If you watch the video you see the size of the Tehran square utterly dwarfs Tahrir.
Some British media reported 'hundreds of thousands' in Tahrir Sq at one point. I have been in crowds of hundreds of thousands, for example during the day of peaceful demonstration in Tehran in 2009 after the days of violence. I do not believe there were ever hundreds of thousands in Tahrir Sq.
I've been in crowds of several thousand on hundreds of occasions at both demonstrations and football matches. At many games, the away fans are given about 3,000 tickets. They are gather in the same area and after the match they all move together in the same direction. Based on seeing this hundreds of times, my estimate of the numbers of hard core protestors staying in the square all night is about 3,000.
Estimates can be based on experience and science. Several analysts have looked at satellite imagery of Tahrir Sq. Clark McPhail, a professor at the University of Illinois is in good company with his assessment that given the physical size of the square it could accommodate a fairly dense crowd of around 200,000 but thinks at most there were 100,000 present.
The U.S. National Park Service has a long history of measuring crowds. It says there is a dense crowd when people are packed in at one person per 2.5 sq feet of space, this is said to be like a tube train in the rush hour.
Day after day I walked through the square, and in almost all parts of it you would easily stroll through, only occasionally bumping up aagaint people. In several key areas, infront of the stages for example, it was packed, but nowhere else. Large areas had very few people in them, or were covered in make shift tents.
The area directly in front of the Washington Mall is slightly larger than Tahrir Sq. When densely packed, as for Obamas inauguration, it is estimated to hold 250,000 people. If the density is extended all the way back down the Mall you might squeeze in a million people.
There was only one day when large sections of the square were densely packed. On the first day of demonstrations, Jan 25th, I was in there in the evening and estimated a maximum of 10,000 people. On the 'March of Millions' day, at the very high end of my estimate, I'd say, if I was being very generous, there were about 100,000 people, but more likely it was around the 60,000 mark.
Crowd estimates are not an exact science, nor is reporting, but there is supposed to be an honesty about both of them.
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