It's no secret that there has been an effort by the Bush Administration and supporters of the Iraq war to downplay the overall death toll in Iraq since the U.S. invasion, and that major media in the U.S. have, by and large, cooperated with this effort.
For example, stories about Iraq on the Washington Post's website have a "widget" at the bottom that informs you today that Iraqi civilian casualties are estimated at between 72,596 ("minimum count") and 79,187 ("maximum count.") This is, to say the least, highly misleading.
The numbers in the Washington Post widget are from Iraq Body Count, a British NGO, and they tally individual deaths reported in Western media [1]. As the explanation on the Iraq Body Count web site clearly explains, they are not an estimate of the overall death toll. The range in the IBC numbers comes from uncertainty about the death toll in specific events reported in Western media.
As Bob Herbert wrote in Saturday's New York Times, "Based on all available evidence, it seems unreasonable to believe that fewer than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed thus far. Many very serious scholars believe the total is much higher."
Thus, according to Herbert, it "seems unreasonable to believe" what the Washington Post reports as uncontroversial fact. [Due perhaps to an editing error, you have to search a bit on the Post's web site even to figure out where these numbers come from.]
A poll released in Britain last week by Opinion Research Business -- well reported in the British press [2] but only noted in major U.S. media by the Los Angeles Times -- estimated that over a million Iraqis have been killed, based on asking Iraqis how many had been killed in their household. As I wrote last week, this estimate is consistent with the Lancet estimate of over 600,000 killed, when you take into account the passage of time since the Lancet cluster survey in July 2006 (as we do in our Just Foreign Policy online estimate, which extrapolates from the Lancet estimate, using the increased death rate implied by the Iraq Body Count tally.)
Even while tilting their coverage to support U.S. government foreign policy, editors at big city dailies will generally acknowledge that they have an obligation to report the news objectively. I've had long exchanges with editors at the New York Times over the years, for example. In my experience, while they think they know everything and are extremely reluctant to admit any possibility of error, if you present ironclad evidence that they are wrong they will back down; and I can't remember any time when a New York Times editor claimed that they could just print whatever they want. There is a standard of fairness and objectivity to which they agree they should be held accountable, even if you can't get them to agree that their behavior in a particular instance isn't consistent with that.
By this standard, I claim, the Cleveland Plain Dealer is an outlier.
Just Foreign Policy sent a press release to media outlets this week pointing out how the ORB estimate was consistent with the Lancet estimate, when you take into account the passage of time -- and increased Iraqi deaths -- between the two estimates.
Kevin O'Brien, Deputy Editorial Director of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote back:
So one group with an ax to grind comes out with an estimate, based on an extrapolation favorable to its political position. Then another group with the very same ax to grind comes out with an estimate, also based on an extrapolation favorable to its political position. And, lo and behold, both of those politically interested groups estimate the same thing. And then they call that happy little coincidence "confirmation." Please remove me from your mailing list and spare me your transparent propaganda.
We pointed out that ORB is hardly a "politically interested group with an ax to grind." They are a firm whose clients include the Bank of Scotland, the Conservative Party, and Morgan Stanley.
O'Brien wrote back: "the fact remains that nothing your advocacy group or their polling firm is doing or has done can confirm any death toll. Estimation is not confirmation."
By ruling out "estimation," -- that is, ruling out the use of statistical inference -- O'Brien is saying that for this particular issue, the usual methods of understanding the world don't apply. The Plain Dealer, like all other newspapers, reports all the time on the results of statistical inference. They report polls and scientific studies that use estimation as a matter of course.
But apparently, because in this case the normal use of statistics might undermine the Bush Administration's case for continuing the war, the normal use of statistics is ruled out.
Anyone familiar with Mr. O'Brien's columns for the Plain Dealer will not be shocked by his advocacy for war. He has written columns belittling peace demonstrators, for example.
Like everyone else, O'Brien has a right to his views. But this issue here is that as Deputy Editorial Director of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, O'Brien has the power to shape the news. For him to dismiss a press release on the grounds that statistical inference can be ignored in understanding the Iraqi death toll is unacceptable.
[1] Note, 9/23: A reader points out that this mis-characterizes IBC. IBC monitors "non-Western" sources. The issue is not that IBC is ignoring "non-Western" sources, which I did not mean to claim. The issue is, what is the size of the gap between the IBC tally, which counts individual, reported deaths, and the true death toll. IBC acknowledges that its tally undercounts the true death toll, as, being a tally, it must. The question is the size of the gap. I regret the mis-characterization.
[2] Note, 9/23: Some commenters on the British Media Lens site take me to task for saying that the ORB poll was "well reported" in the British press. I acknowledge that this was not careful phrasing. I was referring to the fact that it had appeared in several major British outlets, whereas in the U.S. it had only appeared in the LATimes - a significant difference from a U.S. perspective. It wasn't my intention to suggest that the ORB poll had received the attention it deserved in Britain.