Show me the pictures you're talking about. I don't remember the media pushing " pictures from hours before the inauguration started when it was only about half full from where it ended up." I remember seeing pictures which were taken in a timely manner.
Trump lied about his crowd size. Over and over. Obsessively. Sending Sean Spicer out to also humiliate himself by lying about Trump's crowd size.
It was a terribly embarrassing start to Trump's presidency and he was still lying about it a year later because he is petty, dishonest and unpresidential.
I have enumerate times when the media, including CNN, has said positive things about Trump. But you posted this thread as if CNN never praised him before. And you have zero defense for Trump's dishonesty and pettiness. If Trump hadn't made a big deal about of crowd size -- if Trump hadn't been threatened by Obama's popularity and the large crowd at his historical inauguration -- then this would NEVER have been a story. Instead it's the symbol of the sorest, thinnest-skinned, most petty, most dishonest president in history.
Many times Trump could have taken the good press he was getting and built on it. He was receiving wall-to-wall positive coverage after his first address to the joint session of Congress in February 2017. Even Van Jones was praising him on CNN. Van Jones. But he couldn't even make it to the Sunday talk shows to receive the ongoing accolades. He had to come out with his conspiracy theory about Obama wiretapping him, which was based on something he misunderstood that Tucker Carlson said. Shot himself in the face. Various other times he achieved good press, and someone with more self-control than a toddler could have built on that, and could have earned increasing approval numbers, closer to the number which go with a good economy. But Trump doesn't have more self-control than a toddler, so he couldn't do it.
This is all on him. He EARNS his bad press. Even this liberally-biased media tries to find something good to say about him, but he just won't let them.