Media Bias in Iraqi Death Toll Reporting
During the ongoing debate concerning the future of the Iraq War, one issue remains glaringly undervoiced: the enormous number of Iraqi casualties that have been incurred and will continue to be incurred as the fighting continues. Frequently, discussion about the costs of war in Iraq include only American costs, as measured in gold, blood and political power. Despite calls from some to try to understand the war from the Iraqi perspective, news coverage remains predominantly silent when it comes to Iraqi life, death and politics.
According to a 2006 study released by Gilbert Burnham and Les Roberts at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and first published in the The Lancet,‘excess’ Iraqi deaths since the beginning of the war have risen above 655,000. Of those, 601,000 are violent deaths, with 31% attributed to coalition forces. That means, to date, roughly 186,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of coalition violence. Since the media stir over the report in 2006, however, little has been heard about the mounting Iraqi casualties.
