To recap: off-air, Cavuto is recorded estimating the crowd at 5,000, perhaps slightly more. On-air, Cavuto says the crowd is “easily” double or triple that.

Howard Kurtz: Well, the Fox folks leading the tea party charge are Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto and Greta Van Susteren -- all commentators who are paid for their opinions. It makes me a bit uncomfortable the way the channel has turned these April 15 protests into something of a crusade, complete with the drumbeat of advance publicity and the above-named hosts planning to attend various tea parties. But it's not fair to say that Fox's reporters are jumping on this bandwagon, although we'll see how much coverage it gets on Thursday.

On your other question, if Gingrich has criticized Obama on family values, I don't recall hearing it.

Fox News host Neil Cavuto regularly claims that when he aggressively advocates for the anti-Obama “tea party” protests on air, he is simply covering them as a journalist. But Stuart Varney, Cavuto’s fill-in host, admitted this afternoon that the the network is actually promoting the right-wing protests. After telling a guest that the tea parties were in protest to President Obama’s policies, Varney closed a segment by saying, “It’s now my great duty to promote the tea parties. Here we go!”