I wondered about this too...

I hadn't kept up with James Wolcott's blog, but I always want to see what the best writer on the Internet has to say. I've heard the group of protesters at the hospice described as "100 or so people" or "a few hundred." But I've wondered if the camera people were lazy, if the protesters were confined to a small area, or if maybe, just maybe they just kept showing us the same 15 rednecks in a narrow shot to make the crowd look bigger.

Of course, Wolcott puts it better:

Here's something the cable news outfits could do that would rilly rilly rilly be useful, given that they got all those cameras down there in Florida and all.

Just for the kooky hell of it, why don't they provide us with one wide shot or overview of the protestors and vigil-holders in Pinellas Park just so we can see how big the gathering is? Is it a big, swelling group, or is it like the jubilant Iraqis surrounding Hussein's razed statue, a seeming mass revealed in long wideout as a motley get-together? And what is the ratio of Schiavo deathwatchers to media deathwatchers? Are there as many reporters there as sign-holders, or what?

Because whenever there's a ground-level view of the vigil, it seems to be the same scraggly-looking characters and showboating Franciscan friars moving back and forth across the screen, clogging the view.