A fact-based condemnation of ABC News anchors minimizing the death toll in Iraq during reportage about the war's fourth anniversary. According to ABC, "some 60,000 Iraqis" been killed thus far. But as FAIR documents, this unsourced estimate only counts civilian deaths and ignores Iraqi combatants (on both sides), ignores the fact that it is " likely that many if not most civilian casualties...go unreported," and ignores "the standard way to estimate death tolls in war-torn areas" namely, "to use epidemiological surveys based on a random sampling of the population." In addition, as FAIR notes, "a comprehensive demographic survey by Johns Hopkins University published in the medical journal Lancet (10/21/06) arrived at a much ... More »

This is a journalist story revealing how bad the journalism is at ABC regarding lack of realism counting Iraqi deaths. When the press repeats administration under-counts of deaths. and then the public estimates 10,000 dead, versus a scientific study which bracketed the dead at between 400,000 and 900,000; then it is obvious that we do not have an informed democracy. Is the press reporting propaganda, or news? An important journalistic question.

As an advocacy group and media watchdog, FAIR presents its side of the story very well, but doesn't go out of its way to present other viewpoints. This advocacy piece does raise an important question: where did the 60,000 figure come from? (Iraqi civilian deaths reported by ABC and others)

GOP mouth piece pantsed in public. Needs to be aired everywhere! One very good part of this piece is the link to ABC, facilitating interaction with the news broadcaster....aw shucks the link does not work!

There is a great deal of justifiable debate over what number by what methodology may be achieve to account for the mounting human toll in Iraq, but without a doubt this number is far, far higher than 60,000. FAIR does it again.

The Lancet study was sound, and more Iraqis have died since then. Any reporter who cites a number lower than 400,000 (and up to 900,000!) marks himself as a Republican apologist.