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I'd expect a large anti-government protest in the UK to be covered by the BBC and for them, when they finally do, to not misrepresent the numbers.
I don't think that's too much to ask.
johnnyhotdog-
I think your expectations of what the BBC news operation can do with the resources it has are a little high. Covering one thing means not covering another. And I'm honestly hard pressed to say why thousands of people demonstrating in a country of millions automatically deserve more airtime than something else which maybe affects hundreds of thousands of people. Similarly, should every Britain First/EDL demo automatically get airtime? How about whatever al Muhajiroun is calling itself these days?
That said, I'd be happy if they ditched that Newsbeat bollocks and sent the journalists hitherto employed to write celebrity nonsense out to cover the protests.
h2o
Okay, this is getting into Indymedia territory.
There are stories about protests on the news and it's always hard to gauge the numbers at protests - the organisers will always claim a number far bigger than the police estimate.
But yes, the coverage will likely always disappoint protest participants because it's unlikely to be given the billing you think it warrants. And there's always a question of newsworthiness. 'Occupy' got loads of coverage, so did the Spanish movement and more recently the Hong Kong protests. But is every protest going to make it into the news? No, not really, not with fewer journalists and the audience's limited attention span.