A reader of the NPR Check blog flags a troubling passage from the October 1 All Things Considered: “Some estimates put the number of widows in Iraq at 1 million–women who’ve lost their husbands to Iraq’s endless succession of wars: Iran/Iraq, the invasion of Kuwait, the recent civil war.” Public radio watchdog Mytwords (10/5/08) isn’t sure
if the omission of any mention of U.S. responsibility for the widow tragedy of Iraq is the work of [quoted reporter Lourdes] Garcia-Navarro or of an editor–but it is outrageous (and typical for NPR). One could argue that at least NPR is reporting on the human cost of the war, but if that illegal, aggressive war of invasion isn’t even mentioned as one of the causes of the problems, then how much value can such a report have?
Citing other, more honest reportage, Mytwords can only conclude that “it takes a conscious effort to leave out a mention of U.S. culpability when talking about the massive numbers of widows in Iraq.”
Also left out was the toll from the sanctions and the decade-plus bipartisan bombing campaign.
Our gummint kills so many innocents abroad I guess it’s just hard to keep count.
Can we finally stop referring to corpress complicity, as evidenced here, as “complacency” or “cowardice” or “incompetence” or anything other than what it empirically is?