I posted the following note at Fr. Tim's blog where he has kindly linked to my "balanced reporting" post below.

I was a few minutes late on the Hill to catch the front of the March, but was there for quite some while waiting for the end of it to stream past. Teeming thousands...

I was particularly disappointed at the complete absence of counter-protesters. I had especially wanted to get some shots of them and perhaps even an interview, but even though I was v. close to the front of the March when I got to the Supreme Court building, there was nary a pro-abort to be found.

Later we discovered that the standard procedure for the counter-protesters is to show up well before the March begins so there are few or no pro-life people present. By pre-arrangement, the media come to film them and gather quotes and demonstrate that they are really the only ones there. Then they and the media take off, job done, while the teeming thousands are all still milling about on the Mall listening to the speeches.

By the time the teeming thousands of cheery pretty young pro-life girls come streaming past the court house, the pro-abortion counter-protesters (and probably their media buddies) are safely holed up in a pub somewhere near by.

Sometimes some of the media people will go down to the Mall to find the really stand-out cranks in the crowd, the old guys with the really strong southern accents croaking about God and doomsday, and make sure to give them lots of air time.

cf. the Washington Post video coverage, probably available on YouTube. It was a template of this procedure. Almost a caricature of the kind of coverage that has typified the media presence at the March for years.