ORB Survey of Iraq War Casualties - Media Coverage

Media Coverage

An 18 September 2007 an article on the Media Lens website titled "The Media Ignore Credible Poll Revealing 1.2 Million Violent Deaths In Iraq" commented: "ORB is no dissident, anti-war outfit; it is a respected polling company that has conducted studies for customers as mainstream as the BBC and the Conservative Party." It continued: "And yet, despite its obvious significance, the ORB study has been almost entirely blanked by the US-UK media. At time of writing, four days after the findings were announced, the poll has been mentioned in just one national UK newspaper - ironically, the pro-war Observer."

A week after its release, in the USA, only the Los Angeles Times carried the story, of the leading newspapers, although NPR did a piece on it the following Tuesday. In the UK, BBC TV reported it in 81 words at the end of a 34 second segment about a bombing in Baghdad on its flagship news magazine Newsnight. On the BBC website, it was described in 131 words tagged on at the end of an unrelated article with no mention of the study in the title. The only report in the UK press was in The Observer where it was appended to a story on Alan Greenspan's saying Iraq was about oil.

After the 2008 ORB update, it was reported in a UK newspaper The Guardian in March 2008.