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AM Radio on FM Channels. Has the Republican Remake of NPR succeeded?
« on: 2008-03-27 16:11:30 » |
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Posted via http://www.npr.org/templates/contact/index.php?columnId=2781901
Scott Simon introduced a segment on March 15 in which senators James Webb and Jon Kyl talked about "what the war has meant and what the future might hold": "This coming Wednesday marks the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. So far 3,975 U.S. service men and women have died. Estimates on the number of Iraqis killed range from 47,000 to 151,000, depending on the source."
I would like to know how NPR managed to get this number so catastrophically wrong?
The only possible "honest" way to achieve so low a range of numbers is: to watch only Fox Television; to go back in history to a time when lower casualty rates were arguable, if unlikely; to ignore statistical analysis methods as well as plain common sense; to ignore dozens of readily available estimates from numerous sources; or possibly to seek outdated studies achieved by "counting bodies" in an environment where any such survey is foredoomed to be a manifest undercount; or, some combination of the above. If the number was achieved honestly, it cannot even have withstood as cursory a check as to have googled "Death Toll Iraq" which would have given the above assertion the lie, meaning that your reportage, if honest, exemplifies intellectual indolence. Note that better estimates - though still too low by half - have been reported by e.g. NBC's Richard Engel who at least recognized the Lancet data on the NBC Nightly News, (3/19/08) when he stated: "The number of civilian casualties is unclear. Estimates range from 85,000 to 600,000." Even assuming massive indifference to accuracy in reporting, to find such low counts from any credible source would require you to have gone back to mid 2006 for lowball figures predating most of the Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence and the subsequent escalation of American air to ground attacks.
The most recent statistically credible study, the poll conducted by Opinion Research Business, estimated 1.2 million surplus deaths by violence up to August 2007. It should be noted that this study correlates well with the earlier Lancet study, the methodology of which which was validated in the preeminent peer reviewed scientific journal, Nature (Refer e.g. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7113/full/443728a.html). Simply sweeping these well publicized numbers, recognized as statistically valid by every scientist of my acquaintance and by many in print, including statisticians working in the fields of epidemiology and National Statistics Departments of numerous countries (including the UK*), into a memory hole, tends to indicate that NPR has ceased to represent any rationally supportable position and is speaking to the delusions of a small minority of Americans or refusing to deal with the transparent lies of the current Executive branch.
Given that the use of an accurate current American fatality datum by yourselves, while not mentioning the use of an earlier date, and suppressing later studies and numbers, strongly suggests that the numbers that NPR chose to use were not an honest mistake but instead that they were deliberately chosen to establish a skewed perspective. If this is the case, why on earth should the news segment of NPR continue to receive public support or funding?
Sincerely
Hermit
*Refer e.g. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=12489 and please note that the Lancet study predated the 2006/2007 surge in Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence.
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