Live mic catches Fox host tripling his own crowd size estimate

Posted Apr 15, 2009, 12:58 PM PT by Jed Lewison • First broadcast: Apr 15, 2009

Here’s Fox News host Neil Cavuto in Sacramento, CA talking with a producer at 12:10PM, recorded on a live mic:

CAVUTO: Any estimates on how many people are here?

PRODUCER: No, we’re trying to get…

CAVUTO: There’s gotta’ be 5,000.

PRODUCER: Oh, at least. You know, I mean the cops aren’t going to tell us, and we’ve been trying to get ahold of the PR person to give us their number, but I think 5,000. You can say it’s starting at 5,000 [unintelligble, but sounds like “and maybe it’s more.”].

And here’s Cavuto less than ten minutes later, tripling his crowd estimate during his on-air broadcast:

CAVUTO: I know you cover a lot of these things Shep, so you’re probably better at estimating crowd sizes than I am. They were expecting 5,000 here, it’s got to be easily double, if not triple that.

To recap: off-air, Cavuto is recorded estimating the crowd at 5,000, perhaps slightly more. On-air, Cavuto says the crowd is “easily” double or triple that.

Fox News, they report…you decide.

Watch the video here: