Thing is, they were in the employ of a media company.... and... (and this is quite a big AND).... They don't do an academic count.... I personally prefer an academic view (that'll scare the liberals, I know.... a conservative who actually agrees with scientific methodology).... And the guy I use is a University based expert in crowd estimation. He used to be the guy that the media went to for accurate figures.... but, he is not longer giving official crowd estimates for any event. So, I'll go with his figures. Because he is a non biased observer.... and a liberal.
An employee of a media company means zilch. CBS couldn't approach a professional company and say, at risk of full disclosure and ethics investigations, "please skew the numbers to be less for our reporting." That's a ridiculous assumption, it's too cynical for me.
You wouldn't believe a random poster online citing "someone I know," so why bother ever saying that in the first place if you're not going to name the mother fucker. It's a moot thing to say, nobody's going to just go "humph, she must be telling the truth."
and eta: your "guy" who you claim is much more accurate says 90-110. That's a 20k range, and that's also relatively pretty fucking close to the "CBS employee" you're so skeptical of.