More journalistic tunnel vision

If you read this blog you're probably following the U.S. Military-Associated Press smackdown over the Sunnis on Fire story. There's a less dramatic but similar story playing out at the Los Angeles Times, which Patterico is following. I'll link to Michelle Malkin on both because I've got her post up, but she's got links to Patterico and Flopping Aces, which broke the AP thing.

I'd like to point out one other case of what I'll journalistic tunnel vision. I think AP and the LA Times reported this stuff in good faith -- at least I hope so -- but they got burned by propaganda ops because the story lines fit their views of the overall war.

Having said that, this has been bugging me since summer. I posted about it twice, beggining here:

1. Two casualty-counting organizations, icasualties and iraqbodycount, have been documenting reports of Iraqi deaths since the U.S. invasion in 2003. The death counts have been compiled from local and international media reports. For the first part of 2006, they were reporting Iraqi deaths of about 800 per month. These numbers included civilian, police and Iraqi army numbers.

2. In July, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq released a bi-monthly report stating that in May and June, about 6,000 Iraqis were killed.

3. Meaning that, if the UN was right, two-thirds of Iraqi deaths weren't being reported in the newspapers, by Reuters or by AP. Which is a little weird, since AP, in the most recent instance, seems to be reporting phantom deaths.

4. The UN report said that, of those 6,000 deaths in May and June, about half were reported by the Ministry of Health by means of death certificates received from hospitals (the balance were reported by the Baghdad morgue). Of the 2,848 reported by the MOH, just 171 were women and children. Just 6 percent of Iraqi deaths reported by hospitals in May and June were women and children. In a country where the weapons of choice are indiscriminate -- car bombs and IEDs -- doesn't that strike you as odd?

5. The head of the MOH, Dr. Ali al-Shimari, has been reported by the International Herald Tribune to be closely associated with al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army.

So let's think about how this works. UN calls up the morgue, "How many you got this month?" Morgue say says "X." UN calls up Ministry of Health. Dr. Ali says "X."

Does the UN press for some kind of proof? I doubt it. Why would they?

Last call: UN phones the New York Times, "We've got a new report out, let me email it to you." NYT: "Sure. Word or PDF?" Report goes up in the New York Times the next day. It doesn't seem to bother anyone that the UN is reporting a tripling of Iraqi deaths over the course of two months. The headline is just "100 a day dying in Iraq." Even though the local and international media can't find more than 30 or 40 a day.

You know, we had media consortiums formed to go down to Florida to count chads in 2001. Has any reporter expressed the least bit of curiosity about what's going on at the Ministry of Health?
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Also tracking to Patterico, Hot Air.