[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Edwards / Media 'Errors' And The Lancet / Oct 02

[Morton K. Brussel]

The Lancet report:  A critique of the spin that the media have put on  
the estimate of Iraqi civilian losses in the war. --mkb

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> ZNet Commentary
> Media 'Errors' And The Lancet October 02, 2005
> By Dave Edwards
>
> Writing on the BBC's website last month, World Affairs  
> correspondent Paul Reynolds observed that George Bush was  
> struggling to turn Iraq into a stable country before his term ends  
> in January 2009:
>
> "If the president pulls it off, he can leave the legacy he has been  
> seeking in the Middle East - Iraq as the democratic example which  
> justified the war and the cost."
>
> Welcome to the BBC's version of objective, unbiased reporting! In  
> reality, Reynolds can have little idea of events behind the scenes  
> in Iraq. There are occasional reports of US machinations fixing the  
> political process, but almost no journalists are willing to brave  
> the Iraqi streets to find out for themselves. An exception is  
> Robert Fisk of the Independent, who describes how serious Western  
> journalism has all but vanished from Iraq:
>
> "One of the American staff admits he has not been outside 'for  
> months'. An Arab reporter does their street reporting; an American  
> travels around Iraq - but only as an 'embed' with US troops. No  
> American journalists from this bureau travel the streets of  
> Baghdad. This is not hotel journalism, as I once described it. This  
> is prison journalism."
>
> Detached from the real world, BBC journalists are happy to take  
> George Bush at his word when he claims to aspire to a "democratic  
> example" in Iraq. When a Media Lens reader challenged his claim  
> that Bush might ultimately be able to justify the slaughter of  
> civilians in Iraq. Reynolds responded:
>
> "I did not mean you to read that as me justifying the war but what  
> Mr Bush would say."
>
> Reynolds was willing to admit and even correct his 'error', which  
> is nevertheless very much the norm for BBC performance. Thus, also  
> last month, the BBC's Middle East analyst Roger Hardy wrote that  
> George Bush is "determined to stick to a tight political timetable  
> which would enable him to start withdrawing US troops from Iraq  
> next year. But will his rush to come up with an 'exit strategy'  
> force him to abandon the aspiration to create a modern secular  
> democracy out of the ashes of the Saddam dictatorship?"
>
> If challenged, perhaps Hardy would also respond that he meant to  
> communicate "what Mr Bush would say" was his aspiration; that Bush  
> would claim he intends to withdraw US troops from Iraq, despite the  
> construction of a chain of permanent US bases. On August 29, the US  
> Air Force's top general said that US warplanes would remain in Iraq  
> well after US ground troops had withdrawn from the country. General  
> John Jumper said:
>
> "We will continue with a rotational presence of some type in that  
> area more or less indefinitely. We have interests in that part of  
> the world and an interest in staying in touch with the militaries  
> over there."
>
> Much journalism consists of power-friendly 'errors'. In July, the  
> Independent newspaper - considered one of the most rational and  
> honest British newspapers - dismissed estimates published in the  
> science journal, The Lancet, that 100,000 civilians had been killed  
> since the start of the occupation of Iraq. The paper claimed that  
> the sample used to calculate the number of deaths had been "small",  
> adding:
>
> "While never completely discredited, those figures were widely  
> doubted, allowing the authorities in the US and Britain to dismiss  
> them as propaganda."
>
> I challenged the author, senior editorial writer Mary Dejevsky, who  
> replied:
>
> "Personally, I think there was a problem with the extrapolation  
> technique, because - while the sample may have been standard for  
> that sort of thing - it seemed small from a lay perspective for the  
> conclusions being drawn and there seemed too little account taken  
> of the different levels of unrest in different regions."
>
> I asked the Lancet report's lead author, Les Roberts, one of the  
> world's most prestigious epidemiologists, to comment on Dejevsky's  
> criticisms.
>
> The Puzzled Epidemiologist
>
> In his response, Roberts wrote that Dejevsky was wrong even to talk  
> in terms of the report's "extrapolation technique" - the team had  
> sampled, not extrapolated, data. As for the idea that the sample  
> was "small", Robertscommented:
>
> "This is most puzzling? 142 post-invasion deaths in 988 households  
> is a lot of deaths, and for the setting, a lot of interviews. In  
> 1993, when the US Centers for Disease Control randomly called 613  
> households in Milwaukee and concluded that 403,000 people had  
> developed Cryptosporidium in the largest outbreak ever recorded in  
> the developed world, no one said that 613 households was not a big  
> enough sample."
>
> It is indeed puzzling. In 2000 Roberts began the first of three  
> surveys in Congo for the International Rescue Committee in which he  
> used methods akin to those of his Iraq study. Roberts' first survey  
> estimated that 1.7 million people had died in Congo over 22 months  
> of armed conflict. As Roberts says, the reaction could not have  
> been more different:
>
> "Tony Blair and Colin Powell quoted those results time and time  
> again without any question as to the precision or validity."
>
> Indeed, within a month, the UN Security Council passed a resolution  
> that all foreign armies must leave Congo, and later that year, the  
> United Nations called for $140 million in aid to the country, more  
> than doubling its previous annual request. Later, citing the study,  
> the US State Department announced a pledge of an additional $10  
> million for emergency programmes in Congo.
>
> And yet, remarkably, in October 2004, the Daily Mail reported  
> "growing anger in Washington and London" at "the methods used to  
> compile" Roberts' Iraq report - essentially the same methods that  
> had been used in Congo.
>
> Most disturbing in Roberts' reply was his response to Dejevsky's  
> claims that the uneven levels of violent unrest in Iraq compromised  
> the accuracy of the figures. In fact the study not only accounted  
> for this variability, it erred on the side of caution by excluding  
> data from Fallujah where deaths were unusually high. Fallujah  
> provided the only insight into cities experiencing extreme violence  
> (ie, Ramadi, Tallafar, Fallujah, Najaf); all the others were passed  
> over in the sample by random chance. This means that the actual  
> total of civilian deaths is likely to be higher than 100,000.  
> Roberts toldDejevsky:
>
> "Please understand how extremely conservative we were: we did a  
> survey estimating that ~285,000 people have died due to the first  
> 18 months of invasion and occupation and we reported it as at least  
> ~100,000."
>
> Roberts concluded:
>
> "There are now at least 8 independent estimates of the number or  
> rate of deaths induced by the invasion of Iraq. The source most  
> favored by the war proponents (Iraqbodycount.org) is the lowest.  
> Our estimate is the third from highest. Four of the estimates place  
> the death toll above 100,000."
>
> Politicians and journalists have used the low Iraqbodycount figure  
> to attack the Lancet study. They have also made much of a comment  
> made in the Washington Post by Marc E. Garlasco, a senior military  
> analyst at Human Rights Watch, who said of Roberts' figures: "These  
> numbers seem to be inflated."
>
> What the media have +not+ reported are comments made since by  
> Garlasco, who now says that he had not read the Lancet paper at the  
> time and calls his quote in the Post "really unfortunate". Garlasco  
> says he told the reporter:
>
> "I haven't read it. I haven't seen it. I don't know anything about  
> it, so I shouldn't comment on it." But "like any good journalist,  
> he got me to."
>
> Most of the journalists who dismissed the Lancet report did not  
> trouble to establish, or seek, an informed scientific view.  
> Instead, they chose to fall back on government-friendly platitudes  
> and propaganda. Given the gravity of the issue under discussion -  
> our government's responsibility for the illegal mass killing of  
> tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of civilians - one can hardly  
> imagine a more serious journalistic failure.
>
> Perhaps the last word should go to Roberts himself. Towards the end  
> of his email to Dejevsky, we hear the voice of a highly rational  
> scientist who has experienced, fully, just how irrational the media  
> can be:
>
> "It is odd that the logic of epidemiology embraced by the press  
> every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow changes when  
> the mechanism of death is their armed forces."
>
> David Edwards is co-editor of www.medialens.org
>
>
>
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