Business As Usual

In her column today, A War of Images and Perceptions, ombudsman Deborah Howell points out the Post relies on Iraq Body Count for estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths. Here's her account in its entirety:

For its regular Saturday graphic on civilian casualties in Iraq, The Post uses iraqbodycount.org. Its Web site says, "We believe it is a moral and humanitarian duty" to record civilian deaths. The Web site was started in January 2003 by a mostly British group of volunteers, said co-founder John Sloboda of Stafford, England. They operate from home with "hardly any money" and scour the English-language news media daily. If two or more reputable news organizations report casualties, it goes into their database.

As the American Journalism Review notes, Sloboda, [Harmit] Dardagan and their team make no effort to hide their opposition to the war. So why does Howell? One of the stories currently featured at Iraq Body Count has the hed Tony Blair and Iraq: Blithe Ignorance, written by none other than Sloboda. Fine. What independent pro-war databases will the Post add to its coverage?

Other blogs take on the meat of Howell's column, about the staging of photos. Howell agrees that one photo, by our friend Adnan Hajj, appears staged. At Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein writes:

Washington Post photographer Michael Robinson-Chavez, who was there, says of Qana: "Nothing was set up. There was no way photos could have been altered with a dozen photographers there." Yet we have video of "Green Helmet" apparently directing photographers and rescue workers, an AP report (in a puff piece) of Green Helmet holding up a dead body for the cameras, and some pretty persuasive (warning: and gory) circumstantial evidence from EU Referendum....