Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in D.C. Saturday has prompted a backlash of criticism against mainstream media outlets (including the Star Tribune) for noting the "overwhelmingly white" complexion of Beck's following.

Far from engaging in any deep introspection about the movement's appeal, organizers have fired back at the media, noting the overwhelmingly white complexion of most of today's news operations. "Even as the media criticize Tea Party and other conservative rallies for an apparent lack of diversity, they struggle to bring minority voices into their own operations," wrote Nathan Burchfiel on the conservative Media Research Center's NewsBusters website. Indeed, news organizations (including the Star Tribune) do wrestle with diversity. But the comparison seems to end there. Burchfiel's own research cites an American Society of Newspaper Editors census showing an average of roughly 13 percent minority representation in major U.S. newspapers. (Strib managers say the newsroom is in line with the national average). By the national newsroom standard, the number of minorities in attendance at Beck's rally would have been somewhere between 39,000 to 84,500, if you accept Beck's crowd estimate of 300,000 to 650,000. Even if you accept the low-end estimate of 87,000, the number would be 11,300. If you accept Michele Bachmann's crowd estimate of a 1 million, there should have been at least 130,000 minority group members on the National Mall. That might actually have resembled Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington.