MORE Dreadful Media Coverage on Iraq
Posted by: Dean Barnett
TownHall Blog
Last night, for no apparent reason, I was watching ABC News’ nightly broadcast. The lead story was that six whole days after the President announced his plans for a surge, things remain miserable in Baghdad. There were two reasons why ABC led with this dog-bites man story, even though yesterday’s other big events included Barack Obama entering the presidential race: One was a horrific bombing at a Baghdad university, and the other was a just-released United Nations report that said things were awful in Baghdad.
Half of ABC’s segment on Iraq was dedicated to summarizing the U.N.’s report. A word of explanation regarding the report is in order: The U.N. releases one of these things every two months. The U.N., as probably everyone not drawing a paycheck from the mainstream media is aware, has not exactly cultivated a reputation for fair and balanced reporting on matters pertaining to the Middle East in general and the Iraq war in particular. In short, ABC’s editorial decision to rely on a U.N. report as unquestionably authoritative was highly suspect.
The manner in which ABC used the report was itself curious. When I heard how ABC summarized the report, I resolved to do a post on ABC today after I got a hold of the transcript. I couldn’t find a transcript on the web, so what appears below is my own home-produced transcript. ABC reported:
<<< “The new U.N. report…says the Iraqi government is not doing enough to stop the killing. The U.N. also reports:
“More women are being denied education, health care, even the freedom to leave their homes.
“More children are being abducted and sold to militia groups or trafficked abroad as sex slaves, and
“More professionals – journalists, lawyers and teachers - are being targeted for assassination.”
(Emphasis added) >>>
What struck my ear as odd was the vague term “more” that I’ve helpfully highlighted. As I watched the segment, I said to myself, “More than what?” More than in Buffalo? More than in Tehran? More than was the case under Saddam Hussein? More than the U.N. saw the last time they filed one of these reports a mere two months ago? And regardless of which one of these examples the “mores” in question actually applied to, why didn’t ABC tell us how much more?
In searching for these answers, I went to the UN’s website seeking the primary document. Maybe it’s a reflection of my dismal interweb skills, but I couldn’t find it. All I found was this little summary which you’ll get to when you click on the “full story” link regarding the January 16 report (see at link below).
The summary is even vaguer than ABC’s report. As a matter of fact it never uses the term “more” in any context. It could have, however, used the term “less” (or “fewer” for you strict grammarians in the audience) since this two month reporting period saw 600 fewer deaths than the previous two month reporting period. Given that the UN’s summary doesn’t report this almost 10% decline in deaths, we can conclude that whatever UN agent prepared it didn’t consider the figure to be significant. I can think of about 600 Iraqis and their families who might disagree.
I’M ASSUMING, PERHAPS ERRONEOUSLY, THAT ABC got its hands on the actual UN Report before filing its report. And once again, I’ll assume that there was a logical reason that ABC decided to repeatedly use the word “more.”
But even granting those assumptions, ABC’s reporting in this case is gravely flawed. If ABC knew the context for why the term “more” was warranted, it should have passed that context along to its viewers. Having failed to do so, it seems like ABC was just peddling its pre-existing narrative that Iraq is an ever-worsening quagmire without bothering to support that narrative. And again, the preceding charitably assumes that the U.N.’s report put enough meat on the bones to justify ABC’s promiscuous use of the word “more.”
Or think of it another way: If Iraqi deaths had risen by 10% in this reporting period instead of fallen by 10%, do you think ABC would have managed to squeeze that factoid into its report?
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