deaths | ukwatch.net

Some Matter More

Ellie Keen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:13:59 +0000

When 47 victims are worth 43 words

Bad Form

In his classic work, Obedience to Authority, psychologist Stanley Milgram observed:

"There is always some element of bad form in objecting to the destructive course of events, or indeed, in making it a topic of conversation. Thus, in Nazi Germany, even among those most closely identified with the 'final solution', it was considered an act of discourtesy to talk about the killings." (Milgram, Obedience to Authority, Pinter & Martin, 1974, p.204)

The same "bad form" is very much discouraged in our own society. One would hardly guess from media reporting that Britain and America are responsible for killing anyone in Iraq and Afghanistan, where violence is typically blamed on "insurgents" and "sectarian conflict". International "coalition" forces are depicted as peacekeepers using minimum violence as a last resort.

In reporting the November 2005 Haditha massacre, in which 24 Iraqi civilians were murdered by US troops, Newsweek suggested that the scale of the tragedy "should not be exaggerated". Why?

"America still fields what is arguably the most disciplined, humane military force in history, a model of restraint compared with ancient armies that wallowed in the spoils of war or even more-modern armies that heedlessly killed civilians and prisoners." (Evan Thomas and Scott Johnson, 'Probing Bloodbath,' Newsweek, June 12, 2006; http://www.newsweek.com/id/52312/page/1)

The truth was revealed in a single moment of unthinking honesty by a senior US Army commander involved in planning the November 2004 Falluja offensive and convinced of its necessity. He visited the city afterward and declared:

"My God, what are the folks who live here going to say when they see this?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/ weekinreview/04burns.html?fta=y&pagewanted=all)

The answer was provided by physician Mahammad J. Haded, director of an Iraqi refugee centre, who was in Falluja during the US onslaught:

"The city is today totally ruined. Falluja is our Dresden in Iraq... The population is full of rage." (http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-awad100305.htm)

In July 2005, the Independent commented on US actions in Iraq:

"The American army's use of its massive fire-power is so unrestrained that all US military operations are in reality the collective punishment of whole districts, towns and cities." (Patrick Cockburn, 'We must avoid the terrorist trap,' The Independent, July 11, 2005)

In April 2004, the Daily Telegraph reported the disgust of senior British army commanders in Iraq with the "heavy-handed and disproportionate" military tactics used by US forces, who view Iraqis "as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life... their attitude toward the Iraqis is tragic, it is awful." (Sean Rayment, 'US tactics condemned by British officers', Defence Correspondent, Daily Telegraph, April 11, 2004)

Burying The Bride

The anonymous commanders' comments generalise to both British and American media reporting.

In July, Afghan investigators in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, told the AFP news agency that they had been shown the "bloodied clothes of women and children" killed in a July 6 US air strike. The attack was reported to have killed 47 civilian members of a wedding party, including 39 women and children, with nine wounded. The head of the team, Burhanullah Shinwari, deputy speaker of Afghanistan's senate, said: "They were all civilians and had no links with Taliban or Al-Qaeda." (http://afp.google.com/article/ ALeqM5joXBRRzFwxSG_I-Ucf34VMr379hQ)

Around ten people were reported still missing, believed buried under rubble. It is now estimated that 52 people were killed - the same number that died in the London suicide attacks of July 7, 2005. Another member of the team, Mohammad Asif Shinwari, said there were only three men among the dead and the rest were women and children. Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire reports that eight of the victims were between 14 and 18 years of age. (http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/ Anotherweddingpartymassacre_July62008.html). The US military initially claimed only "militants" involved in mortar attacks had been killed.

A separate investigation into a July 4 strike in the northeastern province of Nuristan found that 17 civilians had been killed there. The coalition claimed they had killed several militants who were fleeing after attacking a base. But an Afghan official again confirmed that the victims were "all civilians." (http://afp.google.com/article/ ALeqM5joXBRRzFwxSG_I-Ucf34VMr379hQ) Afghan authorities said the dead included two doctors and two midwives who had been attempting to leave the area to escape military operations.

Air Force Times reports that allied warplanes are currently dropping a record number of bombs on Afghanistan. For the first half of 2008, aircraft dropped 1,853 bombs - more than they released during all of 2006 and more than half of 2007's total. But this only hints at the true extent of the slaughter. The figures do not include cannon rounds shot by fighters or AC-130 gunships, Hellfire and other small rockets launched by warplanes and drones, and assaults by helicopters. Air Force Times comments:

"In close-quarter firefights where friendly soldiers could be wounded if bombs are used, cannon fire and missiles are often the preferred alternative." (Bruce Rolfsen, 'Afghanistan hit by record number of bombs,' Air Force Times, July 18, 2008;
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news /2008/07/airforce_bomb_oef_071708/)

The response of the UK press to these latest atrocities is a case study in censorship by omission.

On July 12, the Guardian devoted 307 words to the attack on the wedding party. The killing of 39 women and children was not considered front page news - the story was buried on page 30. (Mohammad Rafiq Jalalabad, 'US air strike killed 47 civilians, says Afghan government,' The Guardian, July 12, 2008)

On the same day, a 490-word article in the Times focused on the fate of nine British troops injured when a US helicopter accidentally targeted them in a "friendly fire" incident. Six of the nine soldiers have since returned to duty, with three still receiving medical treatment. While 447 words were devoted to this story, the article concluded with two sentences totalling 43 words on the killing of the Afghan civilians:

"However, 47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, an Afghan government investigation has concluded. The nine-man investigation team found that only civilians were hit during the airstrike." (Dominic Kennedy and Michael Evans, 'Friendly fire inquiry to investigate messages from troops,' The Times, July 12, 2008)

At time of writing there have been five mentions of the 47 deaths in UK national quality newspapers.

Media reports on Western victims of terrorist or insurgent attacks typically provide detailed information on the names, backgrounds and personal histories of the victims. When the first female British soldier, Sarah Bryant, was killed in Afghanistan on June 17, the media poured forth details about her life. The BBC website showed pictures of Bryant's wedding and devoted an article to moving tributes from her husband, father, mother, commanding officer, unit commander, friends and colleagues. A friend of the family described Bryant: "A hundred per cent feminine, very pretty, very unassuming, a natural person, very happy - the sort of person that when she was in a room, it lit up." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/uk_news/7463470.stm)

Bryant, recall, was a combatant. The depth of focus changes for Iraqi and Afghan non-combatant victims of US-UK violence. In a BBC online article, Martin Patience reported the July 6 attack:

"Regional officials said the casualties were attending a wedding party and that the bride had been killed." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7502137.stm)

We wrote to Patience (July 14), noting that he had reported that the bride had been among the victims. We asked him why he had not mentioned that fully 39 of the victims were women and children. He responded:

"I accept your point about not mentioning women and children, although, in my defence, the story was linked to the new story and I didn't necessarily want to repeat the details." (Email to Media Lens, July 14)

We wrote back:

"Thanks for your response, I appreciate it. But something doesn't add up. How often did the media provide us with the personal details - name, gender, photo, education, work lives, loved ones, aspirations - of the victims of the July 7 bomb attacks in London? [See here: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/ uk/05/london_blasts/victims/default.stm] The July 6 atrocity in Afghanistan has been reported a tiny handful of times in the press. Why would you be concerned about repeating the fact that almost all of the victims were women and children?" (Email, July 14)

We received no further reply but, to its credit, the BBC did subsequently publish an excellent piece on the July 6 attack: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7504574.stm

Patience had earlier reported: "the latest claim of civilian casualties puts yet more pressure on the Afghan authorities and international forces to get it right when carrying out operations." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7492195.stm)

The reference to the need for "international forces" to "get it right" might sound like neutral language. But imagine if a journalist had commented in August 1990 that claims of civilian casualties had put "yet more pressure on Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi forces to get it right when carrying out operations in Kuwait." The bias suddenly becomes very clear.

Militants And Mistakes

On July 12, Leonard Doyle of the Independent reported:

"The UN said last month that nearly 700 Afghan civilians had lost their lives in Afghanistan this year, about two-thirds in attacks by militants and about 255 in military operations." (Doyle, 'US to investigate air strike that killed 47 Afghan civilians,' The Independent, July 12, 2008)

From this, we were presumably to understand that the "militants" are not conducting "military operations", and Afghan government/"coalition" forces conducting "military operations" are not "militants".

The point being that "militant" is a pejorative term used by journalists to suggest illegitimacy. In June 1999, the BBC reported that "Kosovo Albanians have been welcoming the return of armed KLA soldiers." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/369239.stm) KLA insurgents fighting Serbian forces were supported by the West and were regularly described as "soldiers" rather than "militants" or "insurgents". The British media have similarly referred to the "Chechen resistance" fighting the Russian army. Ironically, British and American journalists also commonly referred to Afghan forces fighting the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan as "resistance fighters" and "freedom fighters" (See our media alert: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/ 07/071120_invasion_a_comparison.php). The use of such terms is of course inconceivable in US-UK reporting of the current occupation.

On the rare occasions when US-UK atrocities are discussed, they are invariably described as blunders rather than crimes. On July 13, Alastair Leithead commented on the BBC's evening news:

"It's these mistakes that cost the US the support of the [Afghan] people."

In September 2004, the BBC's Nicholas Witchell reported on BBC TV news from Baghdad:

"As is so often the case in this conflict it's the Iraqi civilian population which suffers the greatest loss of life - either as a result of mistakes by the Americans, or, far more frequently, of course, as a result of the bombs and the bullets of the insurgents." (Witchell, BBC1, 18:00 News, September 30, 2004)

The bias could hardly be more transparent - we kill civilians only by "mistake", our enemies do not. Noam Chomsky comments:

"The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs purposely kill people, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their killings are just accidental ones, hence not at the level of moral depravity of their adversaries." (Noam Chomsky, 'Terrorists wanted the world over.' February 26, 2008; http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174899)

As Chomsky notes we can distinguish three categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge but without specific intent. When Israel's High Court authorised intense collective punishment of the people of Gaza by depriving them of electricity, when Bill Clinton bombed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in 1998 in Sudan supplying half the country's drugs, and when Bush and Blair invaded Iraq, the devastating consequences for civilians were predictable, but ignored.

Certainly it is reprehensible to kill with intent. But is it any better to kill without intent when the likely consequences for our victims are so irrelevant that they do not even enter our minds? The point being, as Chomsky writes, that Western elites really do appear to regard Third World peoples "much as we do the ants we crush while walking down a street. We are aware that it is likely to happen (if we bother to think about it), but we do not intend to kill them because they are not worthy of such consideration." (Ibid)

When we assemble the different pieces of the media jigsaw puzzle, clear patterns emerge. Western victims are presented as real, important people with names, families, hopes and dreams. Iraqi and Afghan victims of British and American violence are anonymous, nameless. They are depicted as distant shadowy figures without personalities, feelings or families.

The result is that Westerners are consistently humanised, while non-Westerners are portrayed as lesser versions of humanity.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to Martin Patience
Email: martin.patience@bbc.co.uk

Write to Leonard Doyle
Email: l.doyle@independent.co.uk

Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org

Please do NOT reply to the email address from which this media alert originated. Please instead email us:
Email: editor@medialens.org

This media alert will shortly be archived here:
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080722_some_matter_more.php

The Media Lens book ‘Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media’ by David Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London) was published in 2006. For details, including reviews, interviews and extracts, please click here:
http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/guardians_of_power.php

Please consider donating to Media Lens: http://www.medialens.org/donate

Please visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org

We have a lively and informative message board:
http://www.medialens.org/board

A Price still to be Paid

Ellie Keen — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:07:23 +0000

(Sunday 27 April 2008)

AS any labour movement activist will tell you, it is always useful, when facing an important event in the trade union calendar, to have some small preparatory events to publicise the major item in advance to make others aware of the event and book the date.

There is one date in the movement's calendar, however, that no trade unionist wants to see marked in that manner and that is Workers Memorial Day.

Unfortunately, it is the one date on which one can almost always expect to see related and, in this case, unwanted events happening.

This year, the weekend before today's memorial was marked by the deaths on building sites of two, as yet unnamed, workers, who met their end by falling to their deaths from London sites.

They were both men in their twenties and they will leave grieving families and friends who will be left with a gap in their lives which will never be filled.

They will be remembered on Monday, but remembrance is simply not enough for them.

Nor is it enough for the other 220 to 250 people in Britain who the Health and Safety Executive estimates will die each year as a result of their work.

Neither is remembrance sufficient for the 20,000 to 50,000 people who die each year of illnesses caused by work-related ill health, including respiratory diseases, various cancers and heart disease.

UNISON is demanding that Workers Memorial Day should be officially recognised as a national day of remembrance, and that is only right and proper.

But much more is required. Rail and road drivers, pilots and shipping staff can be, and are, held responsible for deaths resulting while people and equipment are in their charge.

Prosecutions occur frequently and stiff sentences are handed out for any negligence uncovered.

But, as construction union UCATT points out, only around 30 per cent of companies involved in killing a construction worker are ever convicted of an offence and that statistic is broadly typical across the whole spectrum of British industry.

And, despite the recent introduction of the Corporate Manslaughter Act, it remains virtually impossible for a company director whose negligence causes the death of a worker to be jailed.

Scottish Trades Union Congress general secretary Grahame Smith has accurately described the new law as a "fudge," pointing out that this legislation will not allow for prosecution of individuals, but only of the company and, "even then, only if the failures of a senior manager can be identified." UCATT described it as "the dampest of damp squibs."

There has always been public outrage at the repeated collapse of prosecutions over disasters such as the Southall rail crash.

And organisations such as Families Against Corporate Killings and the Construction Safety Campaign can attest to the private anger that has been generated among the families of victims.

But, somehow, the HSE and the government always wriggle out of making bosses personally liable to punishment, claiming difficulty in allocating individual responsibility.

Yet it should not be difficult. Decisions on how much of a company's resources are spent on the health, safety and welfare of staff are made at directoral level.

And it is at the level where the decisions are made that the buck should stop - where a boss weighs the firm's profits and workers' lives in the balance and decides that the cost of a worker's life is insufficient reason to curtail company profits.

Covering Israel-Palestine

Ellie Keen — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:37:09 +0000

The BBC's Double Standards

An Exchange With The BBC’s Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen

The media reported last week that at least 22 people, including five Palestinian children, had been killed during Israeli ‘incursions’ into Gaza. The Israeli military ‘operations’ were ‘sparked’ by a Hamas ambush that had left three Israeli soldiers dead. Reporting followed the usual script that Israel’s state-of-the-art weaponry is deployed as ‘retaliation’ for ‘militant’ Palestinian attacks.

The latest deaths followed the killing in early March of over 120 Palestinians under a massive Israeli assault on Gaza. (See our Media Alerts: ‘’, March 3, 2008; and ‘Israeli Deaths Matter More’, March 11, 2008)

One of last week’s dead was a Reuters cameraman, a 23-year-old Palestinian, killed by a shell fired from an Israeli tank he was filming. Few details emerged of the other numerous victims of Israeli violence.

Media Lens emailed Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor:

“In the BBC's recent reports about the violence in Gaza, the only victim of Israeli firepower that I can recall the BBC naming is Fadel Shana, the Reuters cameraman.

“As you know, 22 people were killed, 5 of whom were children. Why are their names not provided by the BBC? Where are the further details that tell us something about them as individuals? Where are the interviews with their grieving families?

“If logistical problems make it difficult to do this, shouldn't you explain this clearly and prominently to your audience?

“Surely if 5 Israeli children had been killed, the BBC's news coverage would have been significantly different.” (Email, April 17, 2008)

Bowen responded on the same day:

“You imply that we have double standards in marking the deaths of Palestinian and Israeli children. I can assure you that we do not.

“After twenty years of reporting wars I believe strongly that it is important to humanise the victims. But we cannot broadcast long roll calls of the dead. News is often about death. If we read out the name of everyone whose death we covered, we would have no room for anything else, including a proper explanation of how and why they died.

“Our coverage yesterday did that I thought excellently. Paul Wood's piece on the Ten O'Clock news was particularly strong, though the work of all the staff in our Jerusalem bureau, supported by our Palestinian staff in Gaza stood out.

“There were no interviews yesterday with grieving families because as the death of the Reuters cameraman showed, it was very dangerous to move around. They may well surface in the next few days. Very little video came out of Gaza yesterday. In a piece I did the night before last I interviewed the father of an 11 year old boy, Riad al Uwasi from al Burej camp, who was killed last week. When he was killed it was impossible to get to al Burej, which is where the Reuters cameraman died. When things were calmer, it became possible, until the next incursion.” (Email, April 17, 2008)

We replied the following day:

“Many thanks for responding. I appreciate your remark that ‘it is important to humanise the victims.’ Your response, however, tacitly acknowledges that you cannot do this so readily for Palestinian victims of deadly Israeli force.

“Justifiable concerns for the safety of BBC staff severely constrain timely and extensive coverage from the scene of Israeli attacks, or their aftermath. And so we hear too little from bystanders and grieving families, or Palestinian spokespeople. Compare and contrast with the headline BBC coverage of attacks on Israelis, such as the recent shooting at the Merkaz Herav Yeshiva in Jerusalem [See our March 11 Media Alert]. Your Middle East webpages are full of reports, analyses and commentaries on that single event alone.

“Five Palestinian children in Gaza have just been killed by Israeli forces. How has the BBC's recent coverage ‘humanised’ these young victims? Where are the interviews with those on the receiving end of overwhelming Israeli firepower? You say such interviews ‘may well surface in the next few days.’ I hope so. But sadly, the record shows that this is not the norm in BBC reporting.

“Instead, the record shows that the BBC does a poor job of reflecting the huge disproportionality of killings, violence and force under Israel's military occupation. As of March 13, 2008, 1,033 Israelis and at least 4,604 Palestinians [had] been killed since September 29, 2000. The ratio of more than 4 Palestinians killed for every Israeli is even more stark when we look at the number of children killed: more than 9 Palestinian children for every Israeli child (http://www.ifamericansknew.org/)

“The extent of relative media coverage to both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian 'conflict' does not have to reflect exactly these tragic statistics. Nor does the BBC viewer require endless reminders of the vast US financial, military, diplomatic and other aid to Israel. Nor do we need to hear again and again the array of UN resolutions targeted at Israel over 60 years [since its founding in 1948], and routinely ignored by that state. But, certainly, the BBC audience would have a hard time finding such salient facts in your reporting. And yet, you promise ‘a proper explanation of how and why they [the victims] died’.”

We then quoted Glasgow University media analysts Greg Philo and Mike Berry who noted, on the basis of extensive research of media coverage of Israel-Palestine:

“The emphasis here is on ‘hot’ live action and the immediacy of the report rather than any explanation of the underlying causes of the events. One BBC journalist who had reported on this conflict told us that his own editor had said to him that they did not want ‘explainers’ - as he put it: ‘It’s all bang bang stuff.’ The driving force behind such news is to hold the attention of as many viewers as possible, but in practice, as we will see, it simply leaves very many people confused.” (Philo and Berry, 'Bad News From Israel', Pluto Books, London, 2004, p. 102)

Israeli Perspective Routinely Highlighted

We invited Professor Philo to comment directly on our exchange with Jeremy Bowen; in particular, on Bowen’s assertion that the BBC is even-handed in its coverage of Israeli and Palestinian victims. In response, Philo pointed to the findings of ‘Bad News From Israel’:

“[T]he focus on Israeli victims, both in terms of the quantity of coverage and the language used to describe them, led some viewers to believe wrongly that the Israelis had the most casualties and these beliefs were attributed directly to what they had seen on television.” (Email, April 18, 2008)

In fact, as we saw above, there have been over four times as many Palestinian as Israeli deaths between September 2000 and March 2008. And the ratio is as high as nine when it comes to children’s deaths. It is highly doubtful whether ‘consumers’ of corporate news media, the BBC included, are aware of this.

The Glasgow University study also cited an unnamed “very experienced” Middle East BBC correspondent who noted “the difficulties of movement applied to media teams trying to reach Palestinian areas.” This is an important point implicitly conceded by Bowen in his reply to us above. This limitation is bound to affect media coverage. As Philo and Berry warned:

“This cannot be an acceptable situation for a publicly accountable broadcasting corporation that is committed to impartiality. Broadcasters cannot absolve themselves from the requirement for balance by accepting a status quo in which one side can ensure that it receives more favourable treatment by imposing restrictions on the other. The broadcasters really have to devote the necessary resources to make sure that both sides are properly represented.” (Philo and Berry, op. cit., p. 137)

Their careful research concluded that news headlines “highlight Israeli statements, actions or perspectives.” Palestinian views do appear in the media “but tend to be buried deep in the text of news bulletins. [...] it is hard to avoid the conclusion that one view of the conflict is being prioritised.” (Ibid., p. 144)

Put more explicitly, it is “the Israeli perspective [which] is highlighted in terms of causes, motives and preferred outcomes.” (Ibid., p. 166). Moreover, Philo and Berry point to “a continued emphasis on Israeli deaths and injuries, both in terms of the amount of coverage which they receive and the consistently detailed accounts which are given of them.” (Ibid., p. 184). This is a pattern that persists to the present day.

Jonathan Cook, an independent journalist (www.jkcook.net) whose honest and incisive reporting from Israel puts the corporate media to shame, told us:

"It is a terrible irony that, precisely because Israel has created an environment in the occupied territories in which it can unleash so much violence so unpredictably, journalists are increasingly fearful of venturing there to tell the human stories of the Palestinian casualties behind the simple numbers. It is, of course, equally ironic that, because life inside Israel is relatively safe, journalists can easily humanise the stories of the far smaller number of Israeli casualties. Unfortunately, Bowen and most other journalists fail to appreciate this irony or to act in useful ways to counter its effects on their reporting.

“When Bowen tells us that 'we cannot broadcast long roll calls of the dead', he's implicitly accepting a set of news priorities that mean the more Palestinians killed the less importance their deaths have to news organisations like his. Conversely, the fewer Israelis killed the more seriousness their deaths are accorded." (Email to Media Lens, April 21, 2008)

Israelis Are ‘People Like Us’

We contacted Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent, for his view. He praised Jeremy Bowen‘s impact on the BBC‘s performance:

“My view of the BBC's Israel/Palestine coverage has changed a little, and mainly because Jeremy Bowen's presence on the ground and in London has brought some sense and balance to the operation. The standard of reporting from Palestine has also improved in the past couple of years or so, since Jeremy took over and especially since the departure of James Reynolds.”

He added:

“Jeremy has some licence from the BBC, and its trillion on-line producers, managers and editors, because of his knowledge, authority and status, which he has built up as both a Middle East afficionado and broadcasting professional over the past twenty years. He has taken the trouble to do his homework and get into the region.”

Llewellyn, however, pointed to the deep constraints that preclude fair and balanced reporting:

“The problem [of bias] is not with him and cannot be dealt with within his aegis.”

Llewellyn explained:

“Editors, producers, presenters, and their immediate bosses, live in the heated climate of London and very much still within their own cultural heritage: the politics of the day plus the memories of an English education. [...] the story ‘concept’ in London is still, I am afraid, that Israelis are ‘people like us’, who should not be shelled every day while they drive their Polos to recognisable branches of Asda or whatever; while Arabs are ‘tricky’ and ‘emotional’ and if they weren’t all firing rockets and hating Jews in the first place none of this would be happening. This is still the platform off which most Western journalists in London jump. To take a different tack is to run into that wall of ‘anti-semitic’ or ‘unbalanced’ reportage that any of us who tries to explain the facts on the ground in the region runs into.”

John Pilger is one journalist has been on the receiving end of such flak in his extensive reporting on Palestine over several decades. His award-winning 2002 television documentary, ‘Palestine is Still the Issue’, is one of his most powerful, and most watched, films on the crisis.

We sent Pilger our exchange with the BBC’s Middle East editor, highlighting Bowen’s assertion that "You imply that we have double standards in marking the deaths of Palestinian and Israeli children. I can assure you that we do not." Pilger replied:

"Jeremy Bowen's quote is indefensible. One only has to read the acclaimed study, ‘Bad News from Israel’, to understand the difference in the reporting of the humanity of Israelis and Palestinians. However, Bowen himself has been an able and brave reporter -- I acknowledged this in ‘Hidden Agendas’ (pages 47 & 50).”

Pilger then recounted an example of the BBC’s institutional bias that systematically suppresses uncomfortably honest perspectives:

“A few years ago, [Bowen] invited me to take part in a BBC special about war correspondents, and we spent an enjoyable hour or so ‘in conversation’. Although it was clear that tales of derring-do would have been preferred, I raised the unwelcome subject that the BBC was an extension and voice of the established order in Britain and its reporting on the Middle East and elsewhere reflected the prevailing wisdom -- with honourable exceptions from time to time. My contribution was cut entirely from the programme. I emailed Bowen and someetime later received an unsatisafactory response that there wasn't 'time or space' in the film -- something unsurprising like that. Censorship by omission is standard, if undeclared practice." (Email, April 18, 2008)

Regular readers of our alerts will be familiar with the corporate media claim that lack of ‘time’ or ‘space’ somehow ‘explains’ the regular omission of honest reporting and critical analysis.

As a result of this undeclared media censorship, public understanding of the Middle East remains limited; and challenges to Western support of brutal Israeli policy are easily diffused and minimised. Sadly, the net effect is that the BBC provides cover for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. This is a tragedy that stretches back to the ‘Nakba’: the ‘catastrophe’ of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians which was the prerequisite for the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. Now seems as good a time as any to exert pressure on this publicly-funded institution to report painful truths.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to: Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East news editor
Email: jeremy.bowen@bbc.co.uk

Write to Helen Boaden, BBC news director
Email: helenboaden.complaints@bbc.co.uk

Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org

Deaths in Detention

Ellie Keen — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:14:15 +0000

'When I calmed down I asked them why they hit me in the nose and jumped on me. They said it was because I wouldn't go in my room so I said what gives them the right to hit a 14 year old child in the nose and they said it was restraint.'

These poignant words were written by Adam Rickwood who was found hanging in his room at Hassockfield Secure Training Centre in August 2004 – at 14 he was the youngest child to die in custody. Hours before his death, he had been subject to restraint by four male officers including the use of a technique designed to inflict pain known as 'nose distraction' and which caused his nose to bleed for an hour. His death followed that of Gareth Myatt a mixed race 15 year old boy who was killed at Rainsbrook STC on 19 April 2004 during the application of physical restraint methods which continued despite Gareth complaining he could not breathe, that he was going to defecate, did defecate, and then vomited. He died from asphyxia and was the first child to die following the use of restraint.

What became clear from the inquests in 2007 was the complete failure of the Youth Justice Board to properly manage the circumstances in which physical restraint was used and the safety and appropriateness of the techniques used. INQUEST has worked closely with the families and their legal team to brief parliamentarians, other child rights and penal reform organisations and the Children's Commissioner on the human rights abuses these cases exposed resulting in widespread public, parliamentary, and media concern about the treatment of children in custody.

After the conclusion of the inquest into Gareth Myatt's death the Coroner, His Honour Judge Pollard made a report to Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, under Rule 43 (of the Coroners' Rules). Following extensive consultation with the family's lawyers, the report specified 34 preventative actions which range widely over the treatment of children, the use of restraint, monitoring, good practice, access for emergency vehicles, and inspection saying that it would be 'wholly unforgivable and a double tragedy' if there was any delay in learning from and acting upon the lessons of Gareth's death. This followed the scathing narrative verdict reached by the inquest jury which implicated failures by the Home Office/Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board in the death.

The government's abiding lack of will to engage with the serious and wide-ranging failures to emerge from the tragic deaths is reflected by unjustified and undemocratic amending of the Secure Training Centre Rules. This broadened the circumstances in which children can be forcibly restrained without parliamentary debate or consultation.

Instead, in July 2007, the government announced a joint review of the use of restraint in STCs, Young Offender Institutions and Local Authority Secure Children's Homes. This review is an inadequate response to the broader systemic issues these deaths raise about how we deal with children in trouble with the law. A proper legacy for these families and their children would be an independent, holistic enquiry in public of the juvenile justice system with the effective participation of families, children, and those working within the youth justice system. Such an enquiry could effect meaningful change by moving us towards a more humane and safer society – and by preventing future child deaths. We fervently believe that there can be fewer goals which are more important.

INQUEST has been calling for such an enquiry since the death of 16 year old Joseph Scholes in HMYOI Stoke Heath in 2002. He was a vulnerable boy with a history of self-harming behaviour who, despite the expressed concerns of professionals with whom he was engaged and clear warnings by himself, took his own life, by hanging, in his prison cell just nine days into his sentence.

At the time of writing, we learned of the death of a 15 year old boy found hanging in HMYOI Lancaster Farms. Why, despite the deaths of 30 children in detention since 1990, have successive governments resisted a public enquiry? The deaths raise issues that go beyond the prison walls and to the heart of society's collective responsibility for tolerating a system that responds to challenging children and young people with punishment and the infliction of pain to control behaviour.

What often goes unmentioned is the high price paid by bereaved families in remaining involved in the lengthy, complicated investigation and inquest process. The families have shown incredible courage, diligence, and persistence to ensure that the disturbing issues surrounding the deaths of Gareth and Adam came to light. Without their participation in the process, it is doubtful that these hidden practices within STCs would have been exposed to any proper scrutiny.

While these two deaths are deeply shocking because they involve children, INQUEST deals on a daily basis with some of the most horrendous consequences of detention in prison, in police custody or in psychiatric detention.

Last year, INQUEST published Unlocking the Truth: Families' Experiences of Investigation of Deaths in Custody that documents some of the unseen consequences of deaths in detention – the impact of a death and its investigation on the family of the deceased and the lack of adequate mechanisms to ensure similar deaths are prevented.

INQUEST has consistently worked alongside families to build up relationships of trust, respect, and compassion so that the families feel empowered and engaged, and feel they can cope with the intrusive and complex legal process in which they are involuntarily engaged. The strategy of persisting in trying to broaden scope of enquiry at inquests, supported by detailed knowledge of other cases and an experienced network of lawyers, has ensured that the details of many deaths in custody are made public.

Establishing the truth about deaths in custody sheds light on the way we treat some of the most vulnerable men, women, and children in society. It is important that we recognise, scrutinise, criticise, and argue for reform of the way the state deals with deaths in custody, as these processes are an indicator of the condition of its democracy.

Last year, of the 45 inquests that have concluded on INQUEST's cases, many after delays of years since the death, four have involved deaths in psychiatric detention, six police custody, and 35 deaths in prison. Many of these inquests have been unreported, not even deemed worthy of a couple of lines in the local media. But they reveal, again, shocking failures in the treatment of vulnerable detainees. Inquests into deaths in police custody have highlighted ongoing concerns about the poor treatment of people with mental health problems, drug and alcohol problems, and poor medical care.

Running through INQUEST's work are concerns about the lack of accountability and failure to learn lessons to prevent similar deaths by taking follow up action on inquest and investigation outcomes across custodial institutions. We worked with others to successfully achieve amendments to the Corporate Manslaughter and Homicide Act 2007 to ensure it would apply to deaths in detention. The government attempted to present the current mechanisms of investigation and accountability as sufficiently robust. Parliament disagreed, and this was further underlined when the Forum on Deaths in Custody published its Annual Report in September 2007 in which the number of deaths in all forms of custody in the preceding year were officially collated and published centrally for the first time. These figures need more scrutiny and analysis than the Forum can provide, in particular the 328 deaths in psychiatric detention.

It does not have the capacity to research deaths in custody, to collate and analyse jury findings and coroner's reports or to monitor the implementation of recommendations arising from inquests or investigation reports. It cannot call to account and recommend action against those institutions and individuals who fail to take action. In May 2007, the government conceded that the Forum's powers and resources were insufficient and made a commitment to reviewing and strengthening the current arrangements, something which is ongoing.

INQUEST has proposed a properly resourced independent overarching Standing Commission on Custodial Deaths with statutory powers to address the complexity and breadth of issues that arise. It is clear that the current mechanisms are insufficient as death after death occurs revealing horrific conditions and lack of basic humanity in the care of detainees. In November 2007, the inquest into the death of 25 year old Martin Green, who died in HMP Blakenhurst in July 2002, concluded with the jury returning a highly critical narrative verdict. Found dead in his cell in the health care centre while undergoing detoxification, Martin, who was 188 cm (6 ft 2 in) tall, weighed just 43 kg (6 st 10 lbs). The jury made numerous criticisms in their verdict, and concluded that his poor medical state coupled with poor assessment, planning, and communication contributed significantly to his death.

The shocking fact of this case, the lack of media interest in the inquest, and the delay of nearly five years in concluding the investigation make a mockery of the government's arguments earlier last year that current investigation mechanisms are sufficient, further illustrated by the last-minute ditching of the promised coroners reform bill. The circumstances of this death raise very serious questions about the quality of medical care afforded prisoners in the custody and care of the state. Martin Green was owed a particular duty of care, and that duty was not met. As a result, he died an inhuman and degrading death.

The number of custodial deaths remains far too high, and many cases reveal a horrendous catalogue of failings in the treatment and care of vulnerable people in custody or otherwise dependent on others for their care. They raise questions about excessive and inappropriate use of custody for some of the most vulnerable people in society; they also highlight failures to fulfil the state's duty to protect life. Inquests repeatedly identify the failure to implement existing guidelines on the care of 'at risk' detainees.

It is clear from INQUEST's monitoring and analysis of deaths in custody that understanding why these deaths occur requires an examination of their broader social and political context. No discussion of self-inflicted deaths in prison can ignore the regimes and conditions operating in prisons, criminal justice policies that imprison the mentally ill and vulnerable or the institutional culture of violence and racism that exists there.

Deborah Coles and Helen Shaw are co-directors of INQUEST.
http://www.inquest.org.uk

How do we end the bloodshed?

Ellie Keen — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:55:21 +0000

With five young men already murdered in Edmonton, north London, this year, questions are being asked at the highest levels about how to stop the bloodshed on the streets.

Edmonton has been dubbed the new ‘murder mile’, and many young residents are as anxious as politicians and parents to end the violence.

Mark Thomas lives near to where fifth victim Bakari Bernard-Davis resided. Known as ‘preacher’, the 18-year-old student told The Voice:

“More policing, better CCTV coverage on the local estates, and harsher punishments for those caught with a weapon needs to be put into place straight away in solving the growing epidemic of knife crime in Edmonton.”

He added: “Trust me when I say I hate feds [police], but right now the community needs to work with them to make our streets safe again.

“These so-called ‘street thugs’ are literally getting away with murder, and innocent people are dying.”

The murder follows those of 18-year-old Henry Bolombi on New Year’s Day, Louis Boduka, on January 21, 16-year-old Iyke Nmezu, on February 29 and 18-year-old Michael Jones, on March 13.

Bernard-Davis, a 24-year-old father of one, was murdered outside his home hours after Boris Johnson, the Conservative candidate for London Mayor, visited Edmonton’s Bounces Road Community Hall.

Johnson had been on a walkabout with Conservative leader David Cameron to discuss violence and anti-social behaviour among youths.

Bernard-Davis was found lying in Bedevere Road, Edmonton, just before 9pm on March 31. Suffering from stab wounds, he died at the scene half an hour later, making him the 16th victim under 25 to be killed in London.

The figure so far has already passed the half mark of total deaths last year. In 2007, 26 were killed – 16 were attacked with knives, nine died in gun incidents, and in one case the cause of death is yet to be confirmed.

Known to his family and friends as ‘Judah’, Bernard-Davis came from a well-respected Rastafarian family.

His parents had recently returned to the UK after spending some time in Kenya. He also leaves behind a younger brother and three sisters.

Within an hour of the murder, The Voice spoke to several residents that live near Bedevere Road. Cries of “not another yout” were heard from many onlookers.

“I can’t believe dreadie is dead,” said a neighbour. “He was a good yout who always walked alone. Why…why him? He did not even have the chance to cry for help.”

The huge rise in the number of teenagers being killed on the streets of London is the biggest threat facing the capital, after terrorism.

Two more teenagers were stabbed to death within hours of each other in separate incidents this week. A boy aged 14 was stabbed in the throat after an argument with a friend, and a 17-year-old youth was stabbed in the chest. Both attacks happened in daylight.

A close-knit community, Edmonton was once known as the ‘towers of Enfield’, due to the four high-rise flats that dominated the north London skyline. However, the flats were demolished in 2001 and replaced by modern redbrick houses, in an attempt to create a pleasant and safer environment for the community.

Edmonton MP Andy Love said: “We need to break this trend. I am profoundly shocked…this is totally and completely unprecedented in living memory.

“There is nothing on the scale of what we have seen in the last three months for the whole population.”

Devastated that her son’s life was cut short, Bernard-Davis’ mother told The Voice:

“I still can’t believe that my son is gone… Judah was a great son and brother to his siblings, not forgetting a dad. He was intelligent, with a good heart.”

Police are appealing for anyone who witnessed Bakari Bernard-Davis’ murder, or has any information, to call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

F.A.C.K. YOU

Ellie Keen — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:29:06 +0000

WORKPLACE DEATHS CONTINUE, TEN YEARS AFTER THE MURDER OF SIMON JONES

“FACK grew out of the campaigning around Simon Jones' death which had a magnificent effect, especially the direct action. It woke people up to the fact that we could take on the companies that kill people and do something about it. There’s over 20 families of people killed at work involved with FACK, campaigning against unfettered and unregulated greed of business. People build struggles on past stuggles, it’s important to learn lessons from past campaigns - it’s how we get stronger”

Hilda Palmer of Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK)

Ten years ago, on 24th April 1998, Simon Jones was killed at a Shoreham dock on his first day at work unloading a ship. His death sparked a campaign of direct action against the corporate killers. Ten years on and despite lip service from Neo-Labour, businesses still get away with the murder of employees and families are forced to fight for justice. Families against Corporate Killing (FACK) were formed as an umbrella group to help people who lose loved ones to workplace accidents.

Eventually bowing to the pressure from both campaigns and large scale corporate safety failures like the (ironically named) Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster and the Hatfield train crash, an offence of corporate killing has finally made it on to the books - just last week in fact, following a government consultation paper published way back in 2000.

The long-standing promise to punish directors who allow their companies to kill people resulted in nothing of the sort. The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act has just become law to universal condemnation from safety activists and unions. The building industry union Ucatt’s general secretary Alan Ritchie said, “This Act will not save the life of a single construction worker. Only by creating the possibility that directors will go to jail will there be a change of culture in the construction industry.” He should know – last year 77 workers died in the building industry.

But despite all the tragedies, how does the workplace safety record shape up now?

In fact, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is worse than ever. Between 2006 and 2007, UK deaths at work went up from 217 to 241, an increase of 11%. In the same period HSE inspections of workplaces decreased by 24%, to the point where a workplace could expect the man from the HSE to call once every 14.5 years. Since 2002, the HSE has lost over 1,000 posts as a result of cuts. Go get them cowboys!

In Britain, a worker between 16 and 24 years old suffers a reported workplace injury requiring more than 3 days off work every 12 minutes of every working day. A young worker is seriously injured at work every 40 minutes. Workplace fatalities in this age range occur at a rate of more than one a month. And year on year, the number of accidents rises.

So the ability to more easily extract a few fines from those companies able to be unequivocally proven guilty won’t come as any consolation to the family of Simon Jones - or Steven Burke, a 17-year-old scaffolder who fell to his death from inadequately constructed ‘birdcage’ scaffold inside a giant sewage reclamation tank in 2005. His case was finally dealt with in February this year. Despite a damning verdict that showed the scaffold he was assigned to was a staggering 2,500 tubes short, his employers 3D Scaffolding Ltd were fined a mere £80,000 (and given 18 months to pay). His family stated, “No amount of money would bring Steven back or hurt the defendants whose actions and inactions led to his death, but the family feel fines should be much greater to bring home the full seriousness of what they have done.”

* For more see Families Against Corporate Killers www.fack.org.uk

Extra Zero

Ellie Keen — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:36:29 +0000

MEDIA ALERT

An Exchange With The Independent’s John Rentoul

In the wake of the July 7, 2005 London bombings, the Independent’s John Rentoul commented:

“A Muslim friend of mine in the East End of London says that the sense of victimisation and injustice goes so deep among his fellow religionists that he sometimes despairs. 'This all goes back to the burning of The Satanic Verses,' he says. It was in 1988 that we should have realised that we were up against a culture - he doesn't like the term 'Muslim community' - that tended to irrationalism and self-pity. Salman Rushdie did not create that culture, but he provided a focus for it and fed its sense of grievance.

“The Iraq issue serves much the same purpose today.” (Rentoul, 'Islam, blood and grievance,' The Independent, July 24, 2005)

According to Rentoul, then, the invasion of Iraq and the mass slaughter that followed was feeding irrational self-pity in Muslims. He added:

“The worst succour that the anti-war left in Britain can give to the terrorists, however, is to entertain the idea that there is a moral equivalence between the deliberate killing of civilians and the casualties of military action in Iraq. Of course, people who think the war was unjustified feel passionately about civilian deaths. But let us get two things straight. First, even Iraq Body Count, an anti-war campaign, puts the total attributable to coalition forces at under 10,000, rather than the figure with an extra zero that is the common misconception of anti-war propaganda. And second, the purpose of the invasion of Iraq, whatever you think of George Bush's motives, was not to kill civilians.”

Noam Chomsky commented on the recurring theme of “moral equivalence” in a rare BBC interview:

"The term moral equivalence is an interesting one. It was invented, I think, by Jeane Kirkpatrick [former US ambassador to the United Nations] as a method of trying to prevent criticism of foreign policy and state decisions. It is a meaningless notion, there is no moral equivalence whatsoever." (BBC Newsnight interview with Chomsky, May 21, 2004; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3732345.stm)

Rentoul’s “extra zero that is the common misconception of anti-war propaganda” had of course been provided by the 2004 Lancet study of mortality in Iraq, which estimated that 100,000 more Iraqis had died since the March 2003 invasion than would have been expected had the invasion not occurred. We were to believe that the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School, Columbia University, Baghdad's Al-Mustansiriya University, and The Lancet (and its peer-reviewers) - the organisations behind the 2004 study - were all anti-war propagandists.

It is easy to understand why Rentoul would be so perturbed, now, by the suggestion that an additional “extra zero” should be added to the 100,000 figure - because it is now likely that one million Iraqis have died as a result of the war.

On April 4, we wrote to Rentoul in response to his piece, ’Truth and myth on the death toll in Iraq.’ (Independent blog, April 2; http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/04/truth-and-myth.html)

Hi John

Hope you're well. You wrote on April 2:

"It is surprising, to put it gently, that the question of whether or not the 1 million figure is right arouses such little interest."

You added:

"If a million people have died in violence in Iraq since the invasion, you might have thought this shocking enough for The Independent, or any other national newspaper, to report it when the survey was published in January. But there was nothing in the British press at all."

In fact it's not at all surprising. Typically, very little attention is paid in the Western media to the victims of Western violence. A study by the University of Maryland last year found that most Americans believed that less than 10,000 Iraqis had died because of the invasion. That's a reflection of media indifference. After all, a poll last year found that about half the American public were able to correctly identify the number of US soldiers killed. And how many people know that senior UN diplomats described US-UK sanctions on Iraq from 1990-2003 as "genocidal"? In 2006, Hans von Sponeck, the former UN humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad who ran the oil-for-food programme, wrote a book called A Different Kind Of War - The UN Sanctions Regime In Iraq (Bergahn Books, 2006). The book describes in meticulous detail the complete US-UK indifference to the mass death caused by sanctions. The book has never been reviewed in the UK press. Again, that's very standard.

You wrote

"One group that is certainly not interested is the absolutist opponents of the invasion, whose representatives will no doubt soon appear in the Comments below. For them, 1 million is a fact – indeed, it is an under-estimate – regardless of the evidence. Just as the invasion was a 'crime' based on 'lies', so the minimum death toll is the highest number that any remotely authoritative source has ever come up with. For some time that was The Lancet’s 655,000, and never mind that 54,000 of that was heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses, or that the survey methods had been challenged."

Most legal experts are clear on the criminality of the invasion, and you'd have to have been living on Mars not to have noticed the lies. But who has asserted the 1 million figure as "a fact"? Certainly we at Media Lens haven't. We have simply reported the most credible scientific advice on the most credible numbers. And as you know, science is not about offering certainty - it's about offering the most reasonable view in light of the currently available facts.

Your link to the 'challenge' is to ’Data Bomb,’ by Neil Munro and Carl Cannon (http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/databomb/index.htm). It's inappropriate to suggest that serious, peer-reviewed science by some of the world's leading epidemiologists and published in the world's premier science journal, has been "challenged" by a couple of hacks writing in a right-wing American magazine. The most serious charge involved Professor John Tirman, Executive Director and Principal Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies (MIT). Munro and Cannon wrote:

“Tirman commissioned the Lancet II survey with $46,000 from George Soros's Open Society Institute and additional support from other funders.” (Munro and Cannon, ‘Data Bomb,’ National Journal, January 4, 2008; http://news.nationaljournal.com/ articles/databomb/index.htm)

Tirman told us:

"Open Society Institute funded a public education effort to promote discussion of the mortality issue. The grant was approved more than six months after I commissioned the survey, and the researchers never knew the sources of funds. As a result, OSI, much less George Soros himself, had absolutely no influence over the conduct or outcome of the survey. This was told to the authors of the National Journal article at least twice. One must conclude that their misrepresentation of this---among many other issues---was intended to sensationalize their version of the story and color the readers' opinion about 'ppolitical bias.' This is contemptible malpractice on their part. It is also a grotesque injustice to Mr. Soros, whose philanthropy has braced and enlivened whole regions of the world." (Email to Media Lens, January 15, 2008)

Tirman commented elsewhere:

"I told this to Munro on the telephone and in an email. He nonetheless implied that Soros money had funded the survey from the start, possibly at Soros' behest. That is a disgraceful lie, and Munro knows it.” (‘John Tirman on Munro and Soros,’ January 11, 2008; http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/01/john_tirman_on_munro_and_soros.p...)

You can see Tirman's demolition of 'Data Bomb' (a truly awful article) here:

http://www.johntirman.com/Bombs%20Away%20-%20a%20dull%20hatchet%20job.pd...

We offered an analysis here:

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080122_all_smoke_no.php

By the way, I wouldn't make too much of the fact that Les Roberts and co are "anti-war". Most sane people are "anti-war". Many scientists are also anti-malaria and anti-famine - it doesn't stop them doing good science.

Best wishes

David Edwards

Rentoul replied the same day:

Mr Edwards
Grateful for the confirmation that you are not interested in the methodological basis of the Opinion Business Research survey either.
Yours
John Rentoul

We also responded on the same day:

Hi John

Thanks, that's also an important subject. The Lancet authors seem to find corroboration in the ORB results. See here: http://www.medialens.org/downloads/pdfs/les_roberts_germany_briefing.pdf

My understanding is that ORB is a respected polling organisation used by the BBC and so on (of course we can argue about how respectable the BBC is).

I think we "generalists" need to be very careful before pronouncing on issues of epidemiological methodology - we have a habit of ending up in ditches in the way of Munro and Cannon. Curious that you would focus on finding confirmation of what I think on something I didn't discuss in a fairly long email about what I do think on a variety of important issues.

I recommend you have a careful read of Tirman's demolition of 'Data Bomb'. Settle in with some tea and biscuits and really give it some thought - it might change your view on this issue. It's vital that we examine the suffering we've brought to the Iraqi people as honestly and carefully as we can - it's that suffering that really matters.

Best wishes

David

We have received no further response from Rentoul. John Tirman had previously posted a comment on Rentoul’s blog on April 2:

“Rendel [sic - Rentoul] misses a point all journalists do: the five surveys of mortality in Iraq show significant congruence. The Iraq Ministry of Health survey he cites (as a WHO survey) did estimate 151,000 violent deaths, but their data also shows more than 400,000 ‘excess’ deaths overall. Many experts see in the data tables evidence of ambiguous categories where those fearful of the Sadrist MoH interviewers would attribute deaths to ‘non-violent’ causes. In any case, the 400,000+ as of June 2006 would translate into 600-700,000 today. The MoH also could not survey 11% of its sample, because those places were too dangerous. It demonstrates not inconsistencies between the surveys, but, more important, just how difficult it is to do such surveys in Iraq, precisely because it is so violent.

"As for plausibility of the high mortality figures, consider this: five murders per day in the 80 ‘urban centers’ of Iraq (pop.>20k) would equal 730,000. The high deaths also track with what we know from many other conflicts regarding the ratio of displaced to death---that ratio is rarely more than 6-1, and there are 4.5 million Iraqis displaced from their homes. See analysis at http://mitt.edu/humancostiraq "

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to John Rentoul
Email: J.Rentoul@independent.co.uk

Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org