Last week, out of obvious frustration, David Rubenstein, coordinator of the Save Darfur Coalition, wrote a letter to Romenesko, a Web bulletin board more often filled with the gripes of journalists about each other. Rubenstein lamented that “Virtually every story about the Darfur crisis reports that 70,000 people have died since the conflict began in early 2003. There is only one estimate that used this figure, and it has been repeated (for lack of other estimates) so much that it is now reported as a simple fact.” Less conservative figures, he wrote, estimate the number dead at 218,000 to 400,000. He ended his email with a plea asking, “How do we improve the accuracy of this reporting?”
The answer, alas, is not easily. Or swiftly. Over the past months, CJR Daily has documented the very problem Rubenstein complained about. In our last update, we noted encouraging signs from the Associated Press, which explained the limitations of the 70,000 estimate.
Yesterday, the New York Times‘s crusader-for-all-humanitarian-causes, Nicholas Kristof, took on this issue in his op-ed column:
Certainly there’s no doubt about the slaughter, although the numbers are fuzzy. A figure of 70,000 is sometimes stated as an estimated death toll, but that is simply a UN estimate for the deaths in one seven-month period from nonviolent causes. It’s hard to know the total mortality over two years of genocide, partly because the Sudanese government is blocking a UN team from going to Darfur and making such an estimate. But independent estimates exceed 220,000 — and the number is rising by about 10,000 per month.
So the number of voices speaking out against the inaccuracies has increased — but has it translated into better news coverage?
Let’s start with the Times. Like other outlets, the paper began the month with 70,000 as its go-to number, with both UN reporter Warren Hoge and Africa correspondent Lydia Polgreen using it in pieces on February 1. The next day, Kristof wrote an op-ed on Sudan, using the larger estimate of 218,000.
Kristof’s column appears to be a turning point, at least for Times reporter Warren Hoge. In his next article on February 9, Hoge provided a range of 70,000 to 300,000 and included the larger estimate in his two other articles this month. In her only other piece on the Sudan this month, Polgreen reverted back to the lame “tens of thousands.”
The progress at the Washington Post is a bit harder to assess. Back on January 13, the paper ran an editorial celebrating a peace agreement in southern Sudan, hopeful that it could help calm the waters for peace in Darfur and estimating that “[p]robably about 300,000 people have died as a result of this violence and the related murder-by-starvation.”
Unlike the Times, no one at the Post picked up on the views expressed on its back page, and the three news articles covering Darfur over the next two weeks all placed the loss of life back at 70,000 or in the “tens of thousands.” Then, on January 31, Sebastian Mallaby, a Post columnist, used his space to promote the cause of Eric Reeves, a Smith College Sudan researcher, who has been working to publicize the conflict and urging journalists to use a higher death toll of about 300,000.
The very next day, Washington Post UN reporter Colum Lynch put the loss at “more than” 70,000. A week later on February 8, Lynch produced a detailed piece — “Lack of Access Muddies Death Toll in Darfur” — covering the problems with deciding on an accurate number. The discussion is muddy, but the one fact that stands out is that the 70,000 estimate is too low.
In a way, it’s unfair that the Times and the Post bear the bulk of our critique. Since the beginning of the year, other news outlets have been nearly silent on Darfur. The Los Angeles Times has run three articles, never breaking free of the “tens of thousands” standard. On the major network news programs, the death toll of the war has only been mentioned three times since January 1, once on NBC (around 100,000) and twice on ABC (70,000 to 200,000). The cable news programs have fared no better.
The only exception to the black hole of coverage is PBS’s “Newshour with Jim Lehrer,” which checks in frequently on Darfur. Unfortunately, its diligence has not carried over into nailing down the human costs. Through February 2, Lehrer and correspondents Ray Suarez and Gwen Ifill all cited the 70,000 figure. On February 2, Ifill interviewed Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, who corrected Ifill, telling her that “estimate is really somewhere in the area of 300,000 people have been killed, mainly due to violence. The 70,000 figure is largely due to disease and conditions in the camps.” Still, weeks later, both Lehrer and Saurez fell back into the echo chamber, referring to the October 2004 low-ball estimate.
Is the coverage improving? Yes. Is it improving fast enough? No. Does it make any sense? No.
The same study that produced the 70,000 figure last October warned that 6,000 to 10,000 people could perish each month if the conflict raged on. It’s about time that editors started paying attention and encouraging their reporters to get a better handle on what really matters here — the human cost of war.
–Thomas Lang
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.