"MEDIA ALERT: BURYING THE INSURGENCY IN IRAQThe BBC, Insurgent Attacks And The New York Times
Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the BBC, like the media more generally, has consistently attempted to delegitimise armed opposition to Britain and America's illegal occupation of Iraq.
Initial reporting presented the insurgency as a fanatical and irresponsible assault on ordinary Iraqi people. On October 1, 2004, for example, the BBC's correspondent in Baghdad, Nicholas Witchell, reported that a series of insurgent car bombs in the capital were "intended to undermine the future". (Witchell, BBC1, 18:00 News, October 1, 2004)
The alleged mindlessness of the insurgency has been repeatedly emphasised. In September 2004, Witchell reported:
"As is so often the case in this conflict it's the Iraqi civilian population which suffers the greatest loss of life - either as a result of mistakes by the Americans, or, far more frequently, of course, as a result of the bombs and the bullets of the insurgents." (Witchell, BBC1, 18:00 News, September 30, 2004)
In fact media reports at the time suggested that operations by US and multinational forces and Iraqi police were killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry."
On the same day the BBC published this report:
Iraq violence: Facts and figures
Gathering reliable data on the current bloodshed in Iraq is difficult, but the available figures help build up a picture of the complex mixture of insurgent attacks and sectarian killings.
The BBC also published another plug for Iraq Body Count which does accept that there may be other ideas about the figures of casualties
Best of all it includes these interesting maps which I have posted below:
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