A group was formed Thursday in Tokyo by 16 people, including journalists, academics and legal experts, to monitor the media in the wake of what it claims was a highly inflated head count at a Sept. 29 Okinawa rally against textbook censorship.

Many news organizations reported that about 110,000 people gathered to demand the government rescind its order to have publishers of history textbooks delete references to the Imperial Japanese Army's involvement in ordering civilians to commit mass suicide and murder-suicide during the Battle of Okinawa.

But the new group, Citizens' Media Watch (Masukomi no Gohou wo Tadasukai), claimed the true turnout at the rally was around 20,000.

According to the group, Tokyo-based security firm Teikei counted the participants by blowing up and digitally analyzing aerial photos of the protest.

Their tally: 18,179 plus some 1,000 or 2,000 more who were not in the photos.

Members of the group said that although some media outlets looked into the credibility of the number, which was announced by the organizers of the rally, others ignored the issue completely.

Citizens' Media Watch Chairman Hideaki Kase, who also chairs the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, said the mass media's coverage of the Okinawa protest reveals the "dangerous characteristics of the Japanese media."

The group said it would send open letters to news organizations later in the day asking them whether they intend to do anything to investigate the coverage of the protest.

It also plans to create a Web site to connect Japanese bloggers and others outside Japan to monitor the media.