Page 196 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

186 Chapter 8

old Camel twice the size of today's average Camel, amongst other issues of
marginal significance.25 This disregard should not be viewed as "natural" or
inevitable, in that leading British newspapers such as the Guardian and the In-
dependent featured the stories on their covers, and framed the 2006 report's con-
tent in far more adversarial language than did American media outlets.26
Media organizations tended to dispute the Lancet's methodological sound-
ness. George Monbiot of the Guardian of London explained, "In the U.S. and
U.K., the [2004] study was either ignored or tom to bits. The media described it
as 'inflated,' 'overstated,' 'politicized' and 'out of proportion'. . . . But the at-
tacks in the press succeeded in sinking the study. Now, whenever a newspaper
or broadcaster produces an estimate of civilian deaths, the Lancet report is
passed over in favor of lesser figures. . . . We can expect the US. and U.K. gov-
ernments to seek to minimize the extent of their war crimes. But it's time the
media stopped c~llaboratin~."~~
The charge that the studies were methodologically flawed was disputed by
those involved in the study. Columbia University Professor and Lancet co-
researcher Les Roberts took issue with the Iraq Body Count's low Iraqi death
estimates (taken more seriously by American and Iraqi political leaders and me-
dia outlets): "The government in Iraq [has] claimed that since the 2003 invasion
between 40,000 and 50,000 violent deaths have occurred. Few have pointed out
the absurdity of this statement. . . it is a gross underestimate. . . if it were true,
including suicides, South Africa, Colombia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia,
Lithuania and Russia have experienced higher violent death rates than Iraq over
the past four years. If true, many North and South American cities and Sub-
Saharan Africa have had a similar murder rate to that claimed in Iraq. For those
of us who have been in Iraq, the suggestion that New Orleans is more violent
seems simply ridicul~us."~~ Gilbert Burnham, one of the study's authors,
Dr.
recounted that "we used a standard survey method that is used all over the world
to estimate mortality. . . . Going to the community for household surveys on
mortality is the standard method used for calculating mortality." Burnham ac-
counts for the radical difference between the estimates of Lancet reports and
more conservative findings as seen in projects like Iraq Body Count, or IBC
(which estimates Iraqi deaths only by those names which can be confirmed in
media reports) fairly simply: "information collected in surveys always produces
higher numbers than 'passive reporting' [as seen in the IBC] as many things
never get reported. This is the easy explanation for the difference between
iraqbodycount.net and our survey."29 The "standard survey method" in which
Burnham speaks of includes a standard research sampling size, as Michael
O'Toole, the head of the Center for International Health at Burnet Institute in
Australia reports that, "scientists say the size of the survey [sample] was ade-
quate for extrapolation to the entire country."30
The summary of media coverage provided above is not meant so much to
argue that the Lancet reports were without flaws or limitations. For one, they
were estimates, rather than total tallies based on a body count (in contrast, Iraq
Body Count can actually verify the deaths of each individual it lists within a
very specific range of accuracy). However, a documented study of all or most of