How many people fit inside Cairo’s Tahrir Square?
Thousands of Egyptian demonstrators rally in downtown Cairo’s Tahrir square on July 8, 2011, as tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets across the country to defend the uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak, directing their anger at the new military rulers over the slow pace of reform.
Thousands of anti-government protesters converged on Tahrir Square for a "million-person" rally on Friday. Cairo's famous city center was jam-packed once again, as demonstrators called for greater political reform and swifter adjudication of the former regime of ex-president Hosni Mubarak.
"Thousands" is probably a conservative, safe number to report on the ground from the teeming streets around Tahrir without access to a high vantage point. Perhaps as many as tens of thousands of Egyptians eventually descended on Tahrir.
But hundreds of thousands?
Counting the number of people in Tahrir is largely a guessing game, according to Joshua Keating in Foreign Policy. During Egypt's revolution, news organizations made several disparate attempts to count how many people could fit into the streets of downtown Cairo near Tahrir.
Last February, Wired came up with a great explanation of how to accurately measure the crowd size near Tahrir. M. Alex Johnson compared how the media was counting protesters on MSNBC's World Blog by listing the reported figures during the last "million-person" rally.
So how did the media do today? Using Johnson's format, here's our look at how various international news outlets reported numbers from Tahrir Square as of Friday:
Al-Ahram: "hundreds of thousands chanted…"
Al-Jazeera English: – "tens of thousands…"
Al-Jazeera English reporter on the scene: "hundreds of thousands…"
Associated Press: "thousands…"
BBC: "tens of thousands…"
Gulf News: "thousands of Egyptians…"
Reuters: "tens of thousands…"
Voice of America: "tens of thousands (around Egypt)"
During the 18-day uprising against Mubarak, protesters were especially proud of the fact that "millions" of men, women, and children came out to Tahrir to demand an end to the regime. Anyone who has ever been to the square during a protest knows how cramped it feels.
But hundreds of thousands? Judge for yourself with these great photos from Tahrir Square on Friday.
One thing is certain – many Egyptians are upset with the direction their country is heading under the leadership of the country's military rulers. And Friday's protest was certainly the largest gathering of opposition activists since the fall of Mubarak earlier this year.