Wednesday, November 28, 2012

How Israel counts its injured

Gordon sent me this:  "Here is an example of the famous BBC news "impartiality" in particular I would like to know why they put the word terrorists in inverted commas.  but elsewhere on the BBC we can find genuine impartiality. The recent radio 4 program More or Less looks at the use and abuse of statistics. Tim Harford quoted a tweet from an IDF spokesman "Unbelievable but true 111 Israelis injured today."   He looked into the numbers of Israelis treated by the ambulance service on that day & there were in fact 112 but the definition of injury is interesting: 3 shrapnel, 27 hurt while running for cover and 82 for 'shock'.   I wonder if anybody was counting the 'shock' victims in Gaza?
Harford gave the only meaningful figure up to that day (before the ceasefire) which was deaths: Israelis 5 Palestinians 162."