WH slams media for 'false reporting' on attendance at Trump's inauguration

Spicer later clarified saying audience figures included those attending and watching around world

White House press secretary Sean Spicer has slammed the media for their reports regarding the attendance at President Donald Trump's inauguration, saying that it was a deliberate false reporting.

"Yesterday, at a time when our nation and the world was watching the peaceful transition of power ... some members of the media were engaged in deliberate and false reporting," the Independent quoted Spicer as saying.

Spicer was speaking at his first press briefing at the White House.

He claimed that Trump had the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration and explained as to why photos on social media, contrasting the attendance of the 2017 inauguration to the attendance at Barack Obama's 2009 swearing in.

Spicer later clarified his statement saying the audience figures included those attending and those watching around the world.

"Photographs of the inauguration process were intentionally framed in a way ... to minimise the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall," he said.

Nielsen estimated that 31 million viewers watched TV coverage of President Trump's inauguration which is better than Obama's second inauguration but short of his first.

Although there are no official figures but some estimates are placing the attendance of Trump's inauguration at around 250,000.

Spicer said that no one had numbers as the National Park Service, which controls the National Mall, does reveal such numbers.

He also stated that the Trump administration was going to hold the press accountable partly by reaching the public through social networking sites.