To: combjelly who wrote (72457 ) 2/16/2005 12:09:18 PM From: Oeconomicus Respond to "One frequently cited misapprehension is that IBC "only can count deaths where journalists are present."[link] This is incorrect, and appears to arise from unfamiliarity with the variety of sources which the media may report and IBC has used. These sources include hospital and morgue officials giving totals for specific incidents or time periods, totals which in turn have sometimes been integrated into overall tolls of deaths and injuries for entire regions of Iraq as collated by central agencies such as the Iraqi Health Ministry (see KRT 25th September 2004 [link]); these are all carefully separated from more "direct" as well as duplicate media reporting before being added to IBC's database... Little-known but impeccably reported death tolls in fact constitute the larger part of IBC's numbers (as can be seen by sorting IBC's database by size of entry). We believe that such counts - when freely conducted and without official interference - have the potential to far exceed the accuracy and comprehensiveness even of local press reporting. It is after all the job of morgues and hospitals to maintain such records, and not the media's, who simply report their findings." iraqbodycount.net
