A sense of proportion, part 2

Fortunately, I am not the only one out here banging a can over the media's silence on the 655,000 estimated dead in Iraq. I came across two such articles today.

Tom Engelhardt writes in his blog at The Nation:

Last week, the President was challenged again at his news conference because of a study in the respected British medical journal The Lancet that offered up a staggering set of figures on Iraqi deaths. Based on a door-to-door survey of Iraqi households among a countrywide cohort of almost 13,000 people, the rigorous study estimated that perhaps 655,000 "excess deaths" had occurred since the invasion, mainly due to violence. (Its lowest estimate of excess deaths came in just under 400,000; its highest above 900,000, a figure no one in the U.S. cared to deal with at all.)

When asked if, given the Lancet study, he stood by the number 30,000 Iraqi deaths, the President responded, "You know, I stand by the figure. A lot of innocent people have lost their life--600,000, or whatever they guessed at, is just--it's not credible." The reporter's response: "Thank you, Mr. President," and all and sundry turned to other matters.

He also notes the following:

Early on, in a study completely ignored in the U.S. press, a group of Iraqi academics and political activists tried to research the question of civilian casualties, consulting with hospitals, gravediggers, and morgues, and came up with the figure of 37,000 deaths just between March 2003 and October 2003.

Even better - and quite a bit more thorough in terms of both data and the implications thereof - is this article at Media Lens. It gives numerous citations from reputable sources to show that Bush's claim that the number is "not credible" is a total fabrication, and notes:

George Bush's comment on the report, "The methodology is pretty well discredited", was widely broadcast and printed. A great moment in TV history was missed when journalists failed to seek clarification on the exact nature of the president's problem with the methodology.

I hadn't thought about it, but this truly would've been great television. Imagine a reporter asking the Prez, "Could you explain, Mr. President, what aspects of the methodology you take issue with?" Or, even better, "what methodology did you use to arrive at your number?" This would've been one for the archives, filed next to Armstrong on the Moon and Janet Jackson's exploding boob - see President Bush attempt math.

More importantly, however, it would have kept the number alive in the media, rather than leaving it a settled question. As noted in the article:

We have been monitoring and reporting media performance for five years, since July 2001. The current media response to a credible report that our government is responsible for the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis is the most shocking and outrageous example of media conformity to power we have yet seen.

We need more than a Democratic congress to save us, folks.