Oh, the irony
A selection of recent posts from Persistence of Vision
Here we go then...
Posted by g33kThug on November 6, 2006, 13:27:50, in reply to "Re: Hello?"
Media Lens issued some alerts.
The were lots of assertions in the alerts that were incorrect.
There were also claims that more solid evidence would be provided to back up those assertions.
And then further claims that IBC's rebuttal would in turn be rebutted.
All of this stuff is documented - so it isn't he said/she said vagueness.
All of this stuff has also been reproduced here by people like Raoul - and they have been very careful in documenting where it originated from.
Now scan through the threads on this board (or on ML) and ask why people who are keen to unearth the tiniest details about the people in this argument or their motives haven't even bothered to get Media Lens to provide backup for the assertions in their original alerts.
The hypocrisy is total - and they don't want to be reminded of it.
Where's the reply to this post:
http://members.boardhost.com/DT3rd/msg/1162680409.html
The OP (and the other "usual suspects") has disappeared because they cannot answer these points without acknowledging that ML lied, distorted, spun and used all the other dishonest weapons that they moan about the mainstream media for using.
IBC seem to have moved on - posting documents that ask different questions to those posed about Lancet 1. And rational questions to boot!
Seems to me that ML (and their followers) are the ones who are trying to lead us along "familiar lines" - especially familiar to anybody who has read Herman and Chomsky.
Oh, the irony...
"Absolute rubbish"?
Posted by Raoul Djukanovic on November 4, 2006, 21:06:11, in reply to "Re: The one stuck in a permanent loop"
Are you really so sure dav?
The whole point of the IBC critique was to say that their numbers, being inevitably low (although ML screwed this bit up royally by inventing a Western sources fallacy instead of just quoting the IBC FAQ), were misleading and were therefor being "used by the British and American governments, and by the media, to attack or dismiss higher estimates in other studies". [1]
The alert went on to stress: "Not only is IBC's surveillance-based total for Iraqi civilian deaths one of the most widely cited by journalists, it is also the lowest", [2] before concluding "the IBC figure is selective in its sources, is the lowest estimate of eight serious studies, and relies on 'professional rigour' in the Western media that does not exist." [3]
The implication therefore was that it ought to cease and desist to deny the warmongers (whom they were, to quote Dahr Jamail's memorably hyperbolic smear, "actively aiding and abetting in war crimes" [4]) any further fig leaf. Lest we hadn't got the message by then, a subsequent alert was entitled "A SHAME BECOMING SHAMEFUL", [5] a line cribbed from a John Pilger email it quoted, beneath a quote from Noam Chomsky that read: "If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong." [6] In other words, hit dem IBC bad boys one more time until they recant for their shameful heresies.
Which consist of... tallying reported deaths and stating they're an inevitable undercount. The only legitimate criticism would have been to say this wasn't stated prominently enough on their site and the only constructive suggestion I can think of would have been to seek to amend that so a form email could be sent out to all journalists misrepresenting the numbers by any concerned party, any time they saw a misuse.
Media Lens chose not to do this. Why not? Go figure...
Notes:
[1] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060125_paved_with_good.php
[2] ibid.
[3] ibid.
[4] Email published by Media Lens editors, March 17, 2006.
[5] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060410_iraq_body_count.php
[6] http://www.journalism.sfsu.edu/www/pubs/gater/spring95/apr27/chom.htm
Re: "Absolute rubbish"?
Posted by David Bracewell on November 4, 2006, 21:13:12, in reply to ""Absolute rubbish"?"
"The implication therefore was that it ought to cease and desist... "
With what can you support this? My memory is that remedy rather than termination was their constant refrain.
"remedy rather than termination was their constant refrain"
Posted by Raoul Djukanovic on November 4, 2006, 22:46:49, in reply to "Re: "Absolute rubbish"?"
With what evidence can you support that assertion, David? And what was the suggested remedy?
Iraq Body Count tallies reported deaths. The only remedy worth considering (beyond that proposed above to ensure that even a fleeting visitor to their site could not miss the reference to the inevitable undercount, together perhaps with a line about deaths attributable to the coalition, although this is trickier to explain, as I explain below) would be to add sources that report deaths which aren't covered by the sources they use. This was not suggested, of course, presumably because they knew of none.
"[I]t is not at all our intention to challenge [the editors of Iraq Body Count's] integrity", [1] the Media Lens editors stated in their second alert, which details their case for assuming the underreporting of deaths attributable to the coalition. They asked John Sloboda whether his "site communicates an unbalanced message on who is dying and who is doing the killing in Iraq?" [2] adding, "Can you point me to areas of the site that draw attention to this inherent imbalance?" [3]
The implication here was that the remedy required was a statement about the probable underreporting of deaths caused by the U.S. and UK. Sloboda responded, with reference to his source list: "deaths unreported in these media are not in our data base. We have always publicly acknowledged that our numbers must underepresent the true figure. The question of by how much is one that exercises us, as it does many others." [4]
This response dissatisfied the Media Lens editors, who said: "But why has IBC not made crystal clear on its website that its figures under-represent the true figure in a particular direction - one that clearly favours the US-UK ‘coalition‘? Where are the caveats on the website advising that sources based on a largely Western press reporting on Western armies engaged in a ferocious war are inherently biased against filling in the wrong gaps - the gaps that reflect badly on the West? Why has IBC not mentioned the obvious reluctance of the ‘coalition’ to allow journalists to discover, research and confirm examples of mass killing by US-UK forces? Why has IBC not mentioned the long history of Western media failing to report Western responsibility for suffering and death in the Third World?" [5]
In short, why isn't Iraq Body Count making a Media Lens-style case on its website? Actually, as the alert acknowledges, they already do, after a fashion, asking: “... is there some unwritten rule by which the combatants killed – particularly the salaried, non-conscript soldiers of the aggressor nations – deserve more care and attention than those innocents – non-combatant men, women and children – whose lives have also been extinguished? If no such rule exists, why is it that on almost any day, a web search of the world's media will reveal massively more reports and discussion of Western soldiers killed than of Iraqi civilians, even though the reality on almost every day is that far more Iraqi civilians have been killed than Western soldiers?” [6]
The editors then asked: "Why is not this truth, and the structural realities of the corporate media system that lie behind it, splashed across the website, in particular on the homepage?" [7]
An apparently reasonable enough question, assuming they don't expect the full text of Manufacturing Consent (of Guardians of Power) on a hyperlink. The trouble is that they follow it up with a partial regurgitation of the Western sources fallacy [*], embedded in this perplexing line: "After all, this 'unwritten rule' suggests IBC’s reliance on the 'professional rigour' of the press (see Part 1) is a fundamental flaw - these are, after all, the same media that supply many of the reports for the IBC database." [8]
In other words, their methodology is flawed to the point where its utility is questionable. That's an argument that I can understand, although I don't agree with it, because I think it's a useful resource, despite its incompleteness and lack of bold type front-page caveats (which I think it needs).
The conclusion to the alert is where it gets problematic - Media Lens starts laying down the law: "We accept that the IBC editors are sincere and well-intentioned. We accept, also, that they have often made clear that their figures are likely to be an underestimate. But we believe they could have done much more to challenge the cynical exploitation of their figures by journalists and politicians. And they could have done much more to warn visitors to their site of the number and type of gaps in their database." [9]
They now say, in effect, 'accept all of our premises' (including the flawed ones), while hinting, in tones of denunciatory moral clarity, that the remedy is to do more to challenge the cynical exploitation of the figures. Confronted with this, "IRAQ BODY COUNT REFUSES TO RESPOND", to quote the next alert [10], which ratchets up the smears, distortions and unsupported assertions to state, with a nudge and a wink: "In reality, IBC is not primarily an Iraq Body Count, it is not even an Iraq Media Body Count, it is an Iraq Western Media Body Count." [11]
From here on it all descends into acrimony and hysteria, with heated exchanges on the ML board (during which my password to post there was withdrawn) and repeated suggestions that IBC winds up its operations. As we both know, there is no direct quote from the ML editors saying "cease and desist", but by the third alert, IBC has become "a deeply flawed website" whose "reputation among journalists" as "respected and reliable" despite being "a 'passive' source of information, in that it does not send canvassers out to do random sampling" (to quote the Independent’s Andy McSmith) is "remarkable" [12], the trademark cue for hyperbolic assertions from Media Lens, a flourish apparently borrowed from John Pilger.
"Only one conclusion can be drawn," state the editors, in full flow now: "that the journalists citing the IBC figures have not studied the IBC database and so have not seen the massive bias and gaps in reported deaths." [13]
Trouble is, they can't see this because it can't be quantified. It's simply +known+ to exist and Media Lens isn't even offering a suggested caveat for the IBC homepage - it's demanding that they incorporate a propaganda model analysis or be denounced. If what they really mean is that the FAQ line on "many if not most" ought to add a clause saying "especially those attributable to the coalition" then they need to provide some evidence that could back this up - i.e. a case study. Failing that, they could have simply said they'd be happy to see John Sloboda's earlier line reworded. But they didn't because we're now into the full-scale denunciation phase, best exemplified by the final alert [14] where all sorts of smears and unsupported assertions get wheeled out - as IBC's response outlines [15] - to no reponse from Media Lens, as far as I'm aware. I don't have the time or inclination to get into all the stuff about amateurs, world's leading epidemiologists and the apparent influence of Les Roberts on the campaign - it's all been said before in any case.
Maybe it's time for the ML editors to concede that "mistakes were made", assuming they aren't about to apologise for anything graver.
Otherwise we'll just go round and round, with ever more mind-numbing tedium - and no constructive outcome whatsoever. Here's an email I sent earlier:
Date: 4 November 2006 20:07:25 GMT
To: "Editor"
Hi again,
You write in response to Josh Dougherty:
"We have quite a few moments like this when we think: either we've gone quite mad and have suddenly lost our capacity for common sense reasoning (a possibility, although odd as there are two of us), or the person we're arguing with is resorting to any old blather, any old obfuscation, to avoid facing an undeniable self-contradiction. At that point, there's little point, because whatever we say will result in - more of the same."
Perhaps if you were to acknowledge the flaws in what you've written about Iraq Body Count, you might yet square the circle and focus this discussion on the issue that matters (the serial distortions in the mainstream media) rather than denunciations based on misplaced moral clarity (the aiding and abetting warmongers line of argument that you're still in effect pursuing).
I'm sure you see the point, whether or not you're prepared to concede it in public. All you're doing here is picking scabs.
Best,
[Raoul]
Notes:
[*] The Western sources fallacy is shorthand for the reference in the original alert to source selection as an indicator of IBC's unreliability. The editors wrote:
"So what are the sources behind the database informing this "early historical analysis"? IBC reveals that these are "predominantly Western", with the "most prevalent" being "the major newswires and US and UK newspapers".
[...]
"[T]he notion that Western media exercise "professional rigour" is absurd.
[...]
"As we have discussed in previous alerts, from its inception at the start of the 20th century, 'professional" journalism has been inherently and massively biased in favour of powerful vested interests. It is exactly these interests that have so much at stake when civilians are being killed abroad. It is in exactly this situation that the mainstream media become wilfully blind, wilfully naïve, and in fact function as a propaganda system for state-corporate power.
[...]
"The report added:
"'We have not made use of Arabic or other non English language sources, except where these have been published in English. The reasons are pragmatic. We consider fluency in the language of the published report to be a key requirement for accurate analysis, and English is the only language in which all team members are fluent. It is possible that our count has excluded some victims as a result.' (Ibid)
"This is a remarkable explanation for such a serious omission, particularly in light of the immense media attention afforded to the IBC figures."
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060125_paved_with_good.php
To quote comments I made in earlier discussions:
"What does the latter highlighted section mean if not the suppression of information? What is the former if not overblown rhetoric?
[…]
"Without being able to demonstrate how the supposedly self-evident lack of professional rigour contributes to an undercount, the use of this line of argument is a straw man. That's why the question is key. Of course all deaths don't get reported, by any news outlet. But the Westernness or mainstreamness of the international agencies is an irrelevance without evidence of their oversights."
http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6098#6098
"Leaving aside the hyperbolic (and unprovable, as Bob J intimated in his challenge to the Davids to give it a go) assertion about the absurdity of 'the notion that Western media exercise "professional rigour"', IBC is being chastised for relying on 'predominantly Western' sources, 'with the "most prevalent" being "the major newswires and US and UK newspapers".'
"Since IBC's objective is to tally reported deaths, the argument would only be valid if the "wilfully blind" Western media were demonstrably ignoring deaths that other sources were reporting (thereby providing a potentially higher tally that's eluding IBC because of the choice of sources). It would matter not whether this were the result of deliberate suppression or anything else. You'd just have to demonstrate it was happening. But Media Lens didn't because they couldn't.
"Anyone's free to criticise the value of IBC if they want, based on the elementary truism (conceded from the outset) that vast numbers of deaths aren't reported. But the Davids' points about the Westernness, corporateness and mainstreamness of IBC's sources are just rhetorical stunts, apparently designed to deceive."
http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6154#6154
I expand on the point further during the course of the thread on those links.
--
[1] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060126_paved_with_good_part2.php
[2] ibid.
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid.
[5] ibid.
[6] http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial_feb0704.php
[7] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060126_paved_with_good_part2.php
[8] ibid.
[9] ibid.
[10] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060314_iraq_body_count.php
[11] ibid.
[12] ibid.
[13] ibid.
[14] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060410_iraq_body_count.php
[15] http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/defended/
Here we go then...
Posted by g33kThug on November 6, 2006, 13:27:50, in reply to "Re: Hello?"
Media Lens issued some alerts.
The were lots of assertions in the alerts that were incorrect.
There were also claims that more solid evidence would be provided to back up those assertions.
And then further claims that IBC's rebuttal would in turn be rebutted.
All of this stuff is documented - so it isn't he said/she said vagueness.
All of this stuff has also been reproduced here by people like Raoul - and they have been very careful in documenting where it originated from.
Now scan through the threads on this board (or on ML) and ask why people who are keen to unearth the tiniest details about the people in this argument or their motives haven't even bothered to get Media Lens to provide backup for the assertions in their original alerts.
The hypocrisy is total - and they don't want to be reminded of it.
Where's the reply to this post:
http://members.boardhost.com/DT3rd/msg/1162680409.html
The OP (and the other "usual suspects") has disappeared because they cannot answer these points without acknowledging that ML lied, distorted, spun and used all the other dishonest weapons that they moan about the mainstream media for using.
IBC seem to have moved on - posting documents that ask different questions to those posed about Lancet 1. And rational questions to boot!
Seems to me that ML (and their followers) are the ones who are trying to lead us along "familiar lines" - especially familiar to anybody who has read Herman and Chomsky.
Oh, the irony...
"Absolute rubbish"?
Posted by Raoul Djukanovic on November 4, 2006, 21:06:11, in reply to "Re: The one stuck in a permanent loop"
Are you really so sure dav?
The whole point of the IBC critique was to say that their numbers, being inevitably low (although ML screwed this bit up royally by inventing a Western sources fallacy instead of just quoting the IBC FAQ), were misleading and were therefor being "used by the British and American governments, and by the media, to attack or dismiss higher estimates in other studies". [1]
The alert went on to stress: "Not only is IBC's surveillance-based total for Iraqi civilian deaths one of the most widely cited by journalists, it is also the lowest", [2] before concluding "the IBC figure is selective in its sources, is the lowest estimate of eight serious studies, and relies on 'professional rigour' in the Western media that does not exist." [3]
The implication therefore was that it ought to cease and desist to deny the warmongers (whom they were, to quote Dahr Jamail's memorably hyperbolic smear, "actively aiding and abetting in war crimes" [4]) any further fig leaf. Lest we hadn't got the message by then, a subsequent alert was entitled "A SHAME BECOMING SHAMEFUL", [5] a line cribbed from a John Pilger email it quoted, beneath a quote from Noam Chomsky that read: "If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong." [6] In other words, hit dem IBC bad boys one more time until they recant for their shameful heresies.
Which consist of... tallying reported deaths and stating they're an inevitable undercount. The only legitimate criticism would have been to say this wasn't stated prominently enough on their site and the only constructive suggestion I can think of would have been to seek to amend that so a form email could be sent out to all journalists misrepresenting the numbers by any concerned party, any time they saw a misuse.
Media Lens chose not to do this. Why not? Go figure...
Notes:
[1] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060125_paved_with_good.php
[2] ibid.
[3] ibid.
[4] Email published by Media Lens editors, March 17, 2006.
[5] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060410_iraq_body_count.php
[6] http://www.journalism.sfsu.edu/www/pubs/gater/spring95/apr27/chom.htm
Re: "Absolute rubbish"?
Posted by David Bracewell on November 4, 2006, 21:13:12, in reply to ""Absolute rubbish"?"
"The implication therefore was that it ought to cease and desist... "
With what can you support this? My memory is that remedy rather than termination was their constant refrain.
"remedy rather than termination was their constant refrain"
Posted by Raoul Djukanovic on November 4, 2006, 22:46:49, in reply to "Re: "Absolute rubbish"?"
With what evidence can you support that assertion, David? And what was the suggested remedy?
Iraq Body Count tallies reported deaths. The only remedy worth considering (beyond that proposed above to ensure that even a fleeting visitor to their site could not miss the reference to the inevitable undercount, together perhaps with a line about deaths attributable to the coalition, although this is trickier to explain, as I explain below) would be to add sources that report deaths which aren't covered by the sources they use. This was not suggested, of course, presumably because they knew of none.
"[I]t is not at all our intention to challenge [the editors of Iraq Body Count's] integrity", [1] the Media Lens editors stated in their second alert, which details their case for assuming the underreporting of deaths attributable to the coalition. They asked John Sloboda whether his "site communicates an unbalanced message on who is dying and who is doing the killing in Iraq?" [2] adding, "Can you point me to areas of the site that draw attention to this inherent imbalance?" [3]
The implication here was that the remedy required was a statement about the probable underreporting of deaths caused by the U.S. and UK. Sloboda responded, with reference to his source list: "deaths unreported in these media are not in our data base. We have always publicly acknowledged that our numbers must underepresent the true figure. The question of by how much is one that exercises us, as it does many others." [4]
This response dissatisfied the Media Lens editors, who said: "But why has IBC not made crystal clear on its website that its figures under-represent the true figure in a particular direction - one that clearly favours the US-UK ‘coalition‘? Where are the caveats on the website advising that sources based on a largely Western press reporting on Western armies engaged in a ferocious war are inherently biased against filling in the wrong gaps - the gaps that reflect badly on the West? Why has IBC not mentioned the obvious reluctance of the ‘coalition’ to allow journalists to discover, research and confirm examples of mass killing by US-UK forces? Why has IBC not mentioned the long history of Western media failing to report Western responsibility for suffering and death in the Third World?" [5]
In short, why isn't Iraq Body Count making a Media Lens-style case on its website? Actually, as the alert acknowledges, they already do, after a fashion, asking: “... is there some unwritten rule by which the combatants killed – particularly the salaried, non-conscript soldiers of the aggressor nations – deserve more care and attention than those innocents – non-combatant men, women and children – whose lives have also been extinguished? If no such rule exists, why is it that on almost any day, a web search of the world's media will reveal massively more reports and discussion of Western soldiers killed than of Iraqi civilians, even though the reality on almost every day is that far more Iraqi civilians have been killed than Western soldiers?” [6]
The editors then asked: "Why is not this truth, and the structural realities of the corporate media system that lie behind it, splashed across the website, in particular on the homepage?" [7]
An apparently reasonable enough question, assuming they don't expect the full text of Manufacturing Consent (of Guardians of Power) on a hyperlink. The trouble is that they follow it up with a partial regurgitation of the Western sources fallacy [*], embedded in this perplexing line: "After all, this 'unwritten rule' suggests IBC’s reliance on the 'professional rigour' of the press (see Part 1) is a fundamental flaw - these are, after all, the same media that supply many of the reports for the IBC database." [8]
In other words, their methodology is flawed to the point where its utility is questionable. That's an argument that I can understand, although I don't agree with it, because I think it's a useful resource, despite its incompleteness and lack of bold type front-page caveats (which I think it needs).
The conclusion to the alert is where it gets problematic - Media Lens starts laying down the law: "We accept that the IBC editors are sincere and well-intentioned. We accept, also, that they have often made clear that their figures are likely to be an underestimate. But we believe they could have done much more to challenge the cynical exploitation of their figures by journalists and politicians. And they could have done much more to warn visitors to their site of the number and type of gaps in their database." [9]
They now say, in effect, 'accept all of our premises' (including the flawed ones), while hinting, in tones of denunciatory moral clarity, that the remedy is to do more to challenge the cynical exploitation of the figures. Confronted with this, "IRAQ BODY COUNT REFUSES TO RESPOND", to quote the next alert [10], which ratchets up the smears, distortions and unsupported assertions to state, with a nudge and a wink: "In reality, IBC is not primarily an Iraq Body Count, it is not even an Iraq Media Body Count, it is an Iraq Western Media Body Count." [11]
From here on it all descends into acrimony and hysteria, with heated exchanges on the ML board (during which my password to post there was withdrawn) and repeated suggestions that IBC winds up its operations. As we both know, there is no direct quote from the ML editors saying "cease and desist", but by the third alert, IBC has become "a deeply flawed website" whose "reputation among journalists" as "respected and reliable" despite being "a 'passive' source of information, in that it does not send canvassers out to do random sampling" (to quote the Independent’s Andy McSmith) is "remarkable" [12], the trademark cue for hyperbolic assertions from Media Lens, a flourish apparently borrowed from John Pilger.
"Only one conclusion can be drawn," state the editors, in full flow now: "that the journalists citing the IBC figures have not studied the IBC database and so have not seen the massive bias and gaps in reported deaths." [13]
Trouble is, they can't see this because it can't be quantified. It's simply +known+ to exist and Media Lens isn't even offering a suggested caveat for the IBC homepage - it's demanding that they incorporate a propaganda model analysis or be denounced. If what they really mean is that the FAQ line on "many if not most" ought to add a clause saying "especially those attributable to the coalition" then they need to provide some evidence that could back this up - i.e. a case study. Failing that, they could have simply said they'd be happy to see John Sloboda's earlier line reworded. But they didn't because we're now into the full-scale denunciation phase, best exemplified by the final alert [14] where all sorts of smears and unsupported assertions get wheeled out - as IBC's response outlines [15] - to no reponse from Media Lens, as far as I'm aware. I don't have the time or inclination to get into all the stuff about amateurs, world's leading epidemiologists and the apparent influence of Les Roberts on the campaign - it's all been said before in any case.
Maybe it's time for the ML editors to concede that "mistakes were made", assuming they aren't about to apologise for anything graver.
Otherwise we'll just go round and round, with ever more mind-numbing tedium - and no constructive outcome whatsoever. Here's an email I sent earlier:
Date: 4 November 2006 20:07:25 GMT
To: "Editor"
Hi again,
You write in response to Josh Dougherty:
"We have quite a few moments like this when we think: either we've gone quite mad and have suddenly lost our capacity for common sense reasoning (a possibility, although odd as there are two of us), or the person we're arguing with is resorting to any old blather, any old obfuscation, to avoid facing an undeniable self-contradiction. At that point, there's little point, because whatever we say will result in - more of the same."
Perhaps if you were to acknowledge the flaws in what you've written about Iraq Body Count, you might yet square the circle and focus this discussion on the issue that matters (the serial distortions in the mainstream media) rather than denunciations based on misplaced moral clarity (the aiding and abetting warmongers line of argument that you're still in effect pursuing).
I'm sure you see the point, whether or not you're prepared to concede it in public. All you're doing here is picking scabs.
Best,
[Raoul]
Notes:
[*] The Western sources fallacy is shorthand for the reference in the original alert to source selection as an indicator of IBC's unreliability. The editors wrote:
"So what are the sources behind the database informing this "early historical analysis"? IBC reveals that these are "predominantly Western", with the "most prevalent" being "the major newswires and US and UK newspapers".
[...]
"[T]he notion that Western media exercise "professional rigour" is absurd.
[...]
"As we have discussed in previous alerts, from its inception at the start of the 20th century, 'professional" journalism has been inherently and massively biased in favour of powerful vested interests. It is exactly these interests that have so much at stake when civilians are being killed abroad. It is in exactly this situation that the mainstream media become wilfully blind, wilfully naïve, and in fact function as a propaganda system for state-corporate power.
[...]
"The report added:
"'We have not made use of Arabic or other non English language sources, except where these have been published in English. The reasons are pragmatic. We consider fluency in the language of the published report to be a key requirement for accurate analysis, and English is the only language in which all team members are fluent. It is possible that our count has excluded some victims as a result.' (Ibid)
"This is a remarkable explanation for such a serious omission, particularly in light of the immense media attention afforded to the IBC figures."
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060125_paved_with_good.php
To quote comments I made in earlier discussions:
"What does the latter highlighted section mean if not the suppression of information? What is the former if not overblown rhetoric?
[…]
"Without being able to demonstrate how the supposedly self-evident lack of professional rigour contributes to an undercount, the use of this line of argument is a straw man. That's why the question is key. Of course all deaths don't get reported, by any news outlet. But the Westernness or mainstreamness of the international agencies is an irrelevance without evidence of their oversights."
http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6098#6098
"Leaving aside the hyperbolic (and unprovable, as Bob J intimated in his challenge to the Davids to give it a go) assertion about the absurdity of 'the notion that Western media exercise "professional rigour"', IBC is being chastised for relying on 'predominantly Western' sources, 'with the "most prevalent" being "the major newswires and US and UK newspapers".'
"Since IBC's objective is to tally reported deaths, the argument would only be valid if the "wilfully blind" Western media were demonstrably ignoring deaths that other sources were reporting (thereby providing a potentially higher tally that's eluding IBC because of the choice of sources). It would matter not whether this were the result of deliberate suppression or anything else. You'd just have to demonstrate it was happening. But Media Lens didn't because they couldn't.
"Anyone's free to criticise the value of IBC if they want, based on the elementary truism (conceded from the outset) that vast numbers of deaths aren't reported. But the Davids' points about the Westernness, corporateness and mainstreamness of IBC's sources are just rhetorical stunts, apparently designed to deceive."
http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6154#6154
I expand on the point further during the course of the thread on those links.
--
[1] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060126_paved_with_good_part2.php
[2] ibid.
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid.
[5] ibid.
[6] http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial_feb0704.php
[7] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060126_paved_with_good_part2.php
[8] ibid.
[9] ibid.
[10] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060314_iraq_body_count.php
[11] ibid.
[12] ibid.
[13] ibid.
[14] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060410_iraq_body_count.php
[15] http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/defended/
posted by g33kThug at 1:43 PM
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