The one truth you can say about war is that the first casualty of war is the truth. And the numbers are usually the first to get fudged. So why does the mainstream media take that information at face value? The reason is simple. If it can't be independently verified - and it can't ever in the middle of a conflict - then just use the consensus number, and for the media that's almost always the number that is the most dramatic. We could be talking about any war. We could be talking about the 300K casualty estimates on the Russian side, provided by Ukraine, or the lack of casualty estimates on the Ukrainian side, also provided by Ukraine, because we're on Ukraine's side. It gives the impression that Ukraine is always winning, which is essential for our ongoing support. It does not come as a surprise that we are surprised when news reaches us that Russia is actually making gains on the ground.
What about the death toll in Gaza? Is there any reason to believe the 30,000 + number with 70% claimed to be women and children? Conveniently, precisely 70% of the people living in Gaza are women and children, matching the deaths of women and children in the war. I guess that's what makes the number seem 'plausible'? Unfortunately, a perfect match, from a statistical standpoint, also makes it extremely doubtful. Read the article in Tablet Magazine written by a Stanford-trained statistician raising doubts about the numbers being provided by Hamas. He's pretty blunt, says they're fake. For the mathematically-challenged like me, there's Dan Senor's podcast with the author Abraham Wyner. Wyner says the starting point is that we can't know the actual numbers, but we can analyze statistical anomalies. The percentage of women and children deaths is one. Another one is the constancy of the rise in deaths over time which appears to have formulaic regularity. Common sense tells you that war happens in waves which should be reflected in the casualty rate. These are tip-offs to at least be skeptical, and lack of skepticism suggests either laziness of reporting or outright bias.
Hard to believe anyone would take the information provided by a terrorist organization calling itself The Gaza Ministry of Health at face value. But that's what most of mainstream media and international organizations have done. The first to get information out there seems to win. My spidey-sense was tingling when the reports first appeared of Israel striking Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza leaving 500 dead and wounded. Of course media outlets around the world ran with it. Turned out to be a misfired Palestinian rocket - it is now estimated that 20% of all fired Palestinian rockets land inside Gaza killing untold numbers - and that between 150 and 200 were killed or injured. How to account for the rush to judgment? An information environment designed to feed the information silos because it feels good, truth be damned.
On May 11th the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revised its child fatality figure from the Gaza war from an estimated 14,500 deaths on May 6th to 7,797. For women it was also almost cut in half from 9,500 to 4,959.
Recently heard from Bari Weiss: "There's not some viral hashtag campaign that's going to defeat a world that is awash in lies. But if you look throughout history, the answer in the end is always what (Natan) Sharansky was saying...which is truth... what one person and one voice can do to cut through the noise... a five-foot-one Jew, who basically, with a small number of Jews whose names are very hard to pronounce, brought down the Soviet Union. How is that possible? Because he had the truth on his side... We have an epidemic of cowardice in the world right now and especially in the West... people would rather be socially accepted, be cool, get into the right places, get into the right colleges, be in the right crowds, than do the right thing... You talk to the average 18-year-old in the US - no shade, there are a lot of amazing ones - but it's about me, my story, my goals, my life, my chapter. The sense here (in Israel) is that you are part of something so much bigger. And when you have that sense of the purpose of your life, it can give you an unbelievable amount, not just of meaning.. but courage."
Some basic rules: Never believe first reports. Never believe the corroborating reports from your side alone. Don't settle for the easy, comforting lies. Seek the hard uncomfortable truth and tell it.
I am skeptical of the news in general, from any source, let alone "statistics" coming from a terrorist organization! I heard/read somewhere (maybe even in one of your blogposts!) that the Gaza Ministry of Health has never incuded any dead "militants" in their numbers, while the Israelis claim that they have killed something like 12,000 "militants" in the war. Which could mean that over a third of the "civilian" casualties reported by the GMofH were actually armed militants. According to the GMofH, there have been zero Palestinian "armed militant" caualties in the war ... only civilian casualties!
ReplyDeleteYeah, they should automatically not accept anything said by the GMofH. But they don't. It's really an indictment of the 'responsible' media, as we learned from the Al-Ahli hospital incident. Once the information has been put out there it can't be taken back in any meaningful way. The damage has been done. The audience has moved on. There's only one first impression. The mainstream media still struggles mightily with the tension between being first and being right, and often make the wrong choice.
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