Media MIA on Iraq Deaths

In October 2004, "a study was published in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, concluding that about 100,000 civilians had been killed in Iraq since it was invaded" in March 2003. "Public-health professionals have uniformly praised the paper for its correct methods and notable results," but "many American newspapers and television news programs ignored the study or buried reports about it far from the top headlines." The timing of the paper's publication, days before the U.S. election, "opened the study to charges of political propaganda." The study's lead author "blames the American news media for being embedded not only with the military but also with the military point of view," but also faults himself for not managing the media better.