Measuring The Media Footprint: Coverage Of War-Time Casualties In The MSM

Ba Chuc, a Vietnamese community in the Mekong Delta, sits just across the border from Cambodia. In April 1978, Khmer Rouge soldiers entered the village and massacred 3,157 men, women, and children—almost the entire population. Photo from Joel Carillet

From Augean Stables:

I recently had an email exchange with a PhD student at Oxford who saw my posting about the study of war casualties in which I pointed out that .06 percent of those killed in wars since 1950 died in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and .3 percent of the Muslims killed in conflicts since then were killed by Israelis. He was struck by how his colleagues could talk of nothing but Israelis killing Gazans, despite the extraordinary violence to be found the world over, much of it really intentional. As he put it in a subsequent email:

The first seminar of the term dealt with a new book, which deals with intentions, double effect and blame. Need I say that the first example (and the main one used to discuss issues of war) was Gaza? And need I add that the lecturer seemed to suggest (although she wasn’t very clear on this point) that it’s controversial what the Israelis’ intentions are (i.e. did they REALLY only want to kill terrorists) but that it’s quite obvious that the actions were disproportionate. (I think that the opposite is true, i.e. that Israel clearly tried to avoid killing civilians but that reasonable observers can disagree on its adherence to proportionality considerations).

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My Comment: This is an excellent post. A must read.