You wouldn’t know it from the British media, but last week a highly respected survey organisation reported that up to 1.2 million Iraqis have died violently because of the conflict, making the 2006 Lancet research that reported 650,000 dead look conservative by comparison.
The survey, by Opinion Research Business (ORB), asked a representative sample of 1,461 Iraqis how many members of their household had died as a result of the conflict. The survey showed that over 1.2 million Iraqis had died, with the death rate now exceeding the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Almost one in two households in Baghdad have lost a family member.
ORB is about as mainstream as you can get. It has been commissioned by the Tory Party, by the BBC (most recently by Newsnight), and its work is cited frequently in the British media.
When an ORB opinion poll in Iraq earlier this year provided statistics that were supportive of the occupation, it was splashed all over the Sunday Times (here and here) and other newspapers internationally.
So far only the Los Angeles Times has carried this story, although this weekend’s Observer mentioned it prominently within another article.
Why hasn’t the story been picked up elsewhere? If this isn’t double standards, what is?
Media Workers Against the War contacted ORB and spoke to managing director Johnny Heald. Mr Heald said that, although the press release had been on ORB’s website since Friday, the results of the survey will be formally launched on Tuesday (September 18).
He said that ORB has no ideological position: after publishing previous poll results on Iraq it was accused of being right-wing, but now he expects that left-wing media will pick up on the new research.
Mr Heald said that an objection to ORB’s latest findings might be that, with so many deaths, where are all the bodies? He said the organsation’s interviewers in Iraq, led by the respected pollster Munqeth Daghir, say people don’t report many murders for fear of reprisal. Four ORB interviews have themselves been murdered, he said.
Mr Heald also pointed out that the survey showed 48% had died from gunshot wounds, which is significant because car bombs and aerial bombardments usually make the news – gunshots rarely get into the headlines.
This figure tallies with the Lancet research, which found that 56% of violent deaths were a result of gunfire.
