Wonder how Americans feel about their servicemen and -women who die in war? Take a trip to Washington and watch the expressions of the hundreds of people who file silently past the Vietnam War Memorial every day, looking for the names of family members and friends.
In modern countries where citizens enjoy freedom, respect for those who have given their lives in conflict seems to be the norm.
But the changing numbers on U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine personnel who have died in Iraq — during Operation Iraqi Freedom and subsequent to the declaration by President Bush on May 1 that major combat was concluded — are driving some Salt Lake Tribune readers batty.
Typical of the 36 phone calls and e-mails I have gotten in the past week is this missive:
“In a front page story in [the] Wall Street Journal titled ‘Mounting Troop Deaths in Iraq’ it states, ‘Already, 92 Americans have died since Baghdad fell on April 9, compared with 102 before that. Of the later deaths, 56 have come since President Bush declared on May 1 that major combat operations had ended.’ However, in [the] Salt Lake Tribune, a front page story titled ‘British Soldiers Killed in Iraq’ states, ‘President Bush declared the end of major combat hostilities on May 1, and since then at least 18 American soldiers have been killed in attacks.’ Why the discrepancy? Perhaps someone at the Tribune could enlighten the public as to the true number of deaths.”
I wish I could wave a magic wand and deliver this number, but I cannot.
Part of the confusion is wrapped up in what numbers reporters are using when they create the wire service reports The Tribune carries on an almost-daily basis. American military personnel have died in combat since May 1, and they have died in accidents. The Department of Defense, keeps what it considers a running account on its Web page (www.defendamerica.mil/fallen.html), but this list is updated only after the deceased person’s family has been notified as they are listed by name. This can delay updating of the list for several days.
According to Paula Froke at the New York office of The Associated Press, one of the wire services The Tribune uses regularly, keeping an accurate count of those who have died in Iraq is difficult because “the numbers are in flux at times.”
That’s no excuse for not providing some kind of qualified cumulative total of deaths in each story out of Iraq that tells about new deaths. Most readers are sophisticated enough to understand a qualified number like this: “As of Friday, 1 p.m. MDT, the Pentagon Web site had listed 56 military personnel by name who have died, either in combat or in accidents, since May 1.” (That number is accurate; in fact, I counted them myself.)
According to the Defense Department Web site, 195 American military personnel have died in Iraq since the war began.
AP is busy trying to get to a definitive number, according to Froke, so that the dispatches from Iraq will have some context.
The Tribune, until AP and other wire services can come to a conclusion, should use the DOD site to keep a running tally, so readers are not baffled by the kinds of numbers tossed around.
Some international reporters have used the total number of deaths in Iraq; some have used the total number who have died since May 1 and some have used the total number who have died in combat since May 1. In some instances, qualifying language has been pared out by copy editors, making the situation even more confusing. One reader called me and said she could not understand how the number of deaths had gone from 47 to 18 in one day. I could not explain it, until I started out to find answers.
The fact is this: If the count had gone from 47 one day to 18 the next with no explanation, then 29 of them got restored to life. In that case, The Tribune would have missed a much bigger story.
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The Reader Advocate’s phone number is 801-257-8782. Write to the Reader Advocate, The Salt Lake Tribune, P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110. reader.advocate@sltrib.com
This week’s scoreboard:
Number of readers who called about the size of type in stories: 27
Number of readers who say they Need glasses to read stories: 16
Number of readers who were upset about front-page story on Manti Miracle Pageant: 11
Number of readers who think only world or national news should go on the front page: 22
