Op-Ed Column: AP Trivializes Iraqi Death Toll, Amplifies Censorship

(updated below)

From the aftermath of the 2003 "shock and awe" bombing campaign all the way through Thanksgiving Day 2008, major US news outlets have nearly uniformly blacked out or downplayed reports of the Iraqi death toll. But a recent Associated Press article reveals the depths to which these outlets are still willing to delve to censor this information.

In the November 27 article "Iraqi Parliament OKs US Troops for 3 More Years," by Christopher Torchia and Qassim Abdul-Zahra, AP editors approved the following characterization of Iraqi deaths suffered since the US invasion:

The war has claimed more than 4,200 American lives and killed a far greater, untold number of Iraqis, consumed huge reserves of money and resources and eroded the global stature of the United States, even among its closest allies.

How's that for a statistically rigorous accounting?

With the exactitude of a third-grader's book report cribbed from a novel's dust jacket copy, the AP -- America's #1 wire news service -- blankets US news outlets with a quantification of Iraqi casualties that would've made Stalin proud.

Seriously, it's 2008. Everybody knows the emperor has no clothes and no clue. Barack Obama is the President-elect. Reality, thankfully (however tentatively), is in vogue. Yet America's "most respected news sources" are still treating the Iraqi death toll as if we're living in a pre-neoconned world.

As MediaBloodhound reported last April, when Opinion Research Business (ORB), a well-regarded non-partisan British polling agency that has conducted studies for the BBC and the British Conservative Party, released its January 2008 follow-up report estimating over 1 million Iraqi deaths since the US invasion -- which both reconfirmed its September 2007 estimate as well as supported prior findings of the 2006 John Hopkins study published in the British medical journal Lancet (650,000 deaths) -- a LexisNexis search showed no US mainstream news outlet carried the story.

MediaBloodhound also pointed out at the time that, writing in FAIR's newsletter Extra!, Patrick McElwee cited an "Associated Press poll in February (2/24/07) that asked Americans how many Iraqis have died received a median response of less than 10,000."

The November 27 AP article in question, which glibly and mindlessly quantifies Iraqi deaths since the invasion as merely a "far greater, untold number" in comparison to Americans killed in the war, reflects how AP's February 2007 poll respondents could be so clueless.

Even Iraq Body Count's estimates, proven to undercount for a few reasons (for one, they only attempt to account for "noncombatants"), were tens of thousands of casualties higher than the median estimate provided by respondents in the 2007 AP poll. Today, the Iraq Body Count estimates around 100,000 Iraqi deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) published its estimate of Iraqi dead last January, though its count only covered the time from the beginning of the war through June 2006. Its findings then, which wouldn't account for nearly two and a half years of the war since? The WHO estimated between 104,000 and 223,000 deaths, with a median of 151,000.

Whenever citing the Iraqi death toll since the 2003 invasion, the AP, and any news outlet wishing to be seen as credible, should at the very least either a provide a range of estimates from viable sources (e.g., 200,000 to over 1 million) or a median estimate (e.g. roughly 600,000).

As McElwee stated nearly a year ago, "If Americans are to make informed judgments not only about the invasion of Iraq and whether the occupation should continue, but also about future wars our government may wish to start, then we need to have good information about the war's impact on Iraqis."

Major US news outlets, with their number #1 wire service now leading the way in censoring the Iraqi death toll, continue to report on this subject, the rare times it surfaces in articles, as though it's still 2003. It was wrong then. Today, it should at least be grounds for editors to be reprimanded or lose their jobs and for immediate corrections to be printed.

It's 2008. Enough is enough. Give us the damn facts and get out of the way.

UPDATE: Today's New York Times article "More Iraqi Dead Last Month, But Fewer Than Last Year," by Alissa J. Rubin, keeps up this grand tradition of censoring the Iraqi death toll in a report about the Iraqi death toll. Here's the lede:

The numbers of Iraqi civilian deaths and improvised explosive devices increased in November, although there were still fewer of each than in September, according to statistics from the Interior Ministry.

The number of civilian deaths last month was 148, compared with 118 in October and 156 in September.

The number of I.E.D.’s was 108, compared with 79 in October and 113 in September. Most measures of violence remain much lower than last fall.

As far as numbers go, that's all our paper of record provides. No range of estimates on the number of Iraqi dead. No median calculation derived from that range. Not even a reference to the overall Iraqi lives lost since the US invasion. AP's "far greater, untold number" may be woefully deficient yet Times editors managed to ignore the topic altogether, as though counting Iraqi deaths is only possible in monthly increments, microcosmic snapshots that conveniently keep the genocidal numbers out of sight and out of mind.

Comments

[Brad Jacobson]

AP Trivializes Iraqi Death Toll, Amplifies Censorship

[Christopher Flynn]

Students lie, cheat, steal, but say they're good...from Yahoo news article
"30% of US high school students have stolen from a store and 64% have cheated on a test within the past year".
Our nation is really setting a trend,,,No wonder the AP lies to us, and with future reporters coming from this next batch of kids, they'll keep lying...

[Batocchio]

I've normally written estimates range from 100,000 to 1 million, but that it's underreported and typically glossed over. I don't think I heard of the ORB report, but the Johns Hopkins study got quite a bit of coverage. Then there's the 4-5 million displaced Iraqis, a staggering number in absolute terms, but even more so as a percentage of the population. Your main points are definitely correct - the subject just is not covered well, and normally not at all. Many in the Pentagon felt news footage caused them to "lose" Vietnan, so with the first Gulf War, the Pentagon worked hard to sanitize all war coverage. It's striking to see Iraq coverage in the U.S. ("The surge is working! Sis-boom-bah!") versus what's done by BBC and other outlets.

Oh, and there's a "debate" about whether water-boarding is torture, did you know? Funny, though, only the Bush administration and their backers claim it's a debate. Well, scratch that, the media follows as intended, and plays along. There are no ill consequences to American actions...

[Brad Jacobson]

Batocchio, thanks for your comment as always. Just for the record, I've got one quibble with your quibble. Almost all coverage the Johns Hopkins study received in the MSM downplayed its significance (why I included the words "blacked out or downplayed" in the intro) and, in most cases, purported, or featured unfounded claims, that the study wasn't incredible -- from coverage of President Bush's press conference at the time (where only one member of the WH press corps even raised the study -- Suzanne Malveaux -- before allowing the President to slam the study without follow-up and pull a number -- 30,000 Iraqi dead -- out of thin air) and throughout our major news outlets, in print and on air.

[NoOneYouKnow]

The AP and the NYT are propaganda organs, not news media; the NYT does a better job of slathering its disinformation with factoids, but they're both tools of our corporatist government (see "The Mighty Wurlitzer" for history and details).

[Jojo]

I don't know if this is trivializing or just admitting "We have no idea how many Iraqis have died. It's a lot, ok."

[Batocchio]

Fair enough, MBH. No argument that the subject - and many dire realities in Iraq - are horribly, unconscionably ignored.

[rachel]

i think the comment about the ap remark is completely valid..

however, both washington post and cnn, did do john hopkins story.. (didn't look further before responding)
"this american life" went on and dissected the study in detail.. explaining the comments made by one person quoted in the washington post article who said he was on a train and had not read the study when a reporter called and asked "what do you think of the number" and he said "quite high"
however that same npr report talked in length to the man who carried out the report.. i would suggest the story to anyone who has the time:
it was on this american life: 10-28-05 Whats in a number?"

[kathy@orange county wrongful death attorney]

Things will be different come the revolution, said some guy I used to know at work. Things are changing though.