only $120 million

Headlines On This Date 4 Years Ago:

“Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops Die in unarmored Humvees"

Headlines Today:

"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $120 million"

"Obama Spends $120 million on inauguration; America Needs A Big Party"

I was just looking for sources to back myself up and here's what I found:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Inauguration/story?id=6665946&page=1

their angle is so "forgiving" ... but notice that Obama's is paid for by the feds, and Bush's was private funds. Interesting.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/01/13/2009-01-13_obamas_inauguration_is_most_expensive_ev.html

I think this was a projection from before the fact. This is the the article accused below...

Here's what the other side says:

"It also highlighted the type of news you can generate when making blatantly false comparisons. In this case, it was the cost of the Obama and Bush inaugurations. The connection was unfair because the Obama figure of $160 million that got repeated in the press included security costs associated with the massive event. But the Bush tab of $42 million left out those enormous costs. Talk about stacking the deck.

The misinformation first arrived in the form of an underreported newspaper article in America, and then one in London. Between them, and thanks to furious transatlantic online linking, the reports gave birth to the story that Obama's inauguration was going to cost nearly four times what the country spent on Bush's bash in 2005 -- that the Obama inauguration would cost almost $120 million more."

Source: http://mediamatters.org/columns/200901170003