USA Today's Iraq Progress (Fair.Org)

Military claims appear without scrutiny

Government efforts to portray progress in the Iraq War were boosted by USA Today's August 13 front page story, "Major attacks decline in Iraq."

The paper's report relied entirely on current and former military officials, with the key claim being that "large al-Qaeda-style attacks in Iraq have declined nearly 50% since the United States started increasing troop levels in Iraq about six months ago." The paper added that such attacks "have dropped to about 70 in July from a high during the past year of about 130 in March, according to the Multi-National Force-Iraq."

This claim deserved some serious scrutiny, but USA Today unfortunately provided none. ...

Counts of civilian deaths in Iraq vary: the Associated Press reported (Christian Science Monitor, 8/3/07) at least 2,024 violent deaths in July (an increase of 23 percent from June), while the Iraqi government reported a lower total (1,652) that was nonetheless a significant increase from the previous month (Agence France Presse, 8/1/07)

Given that such data is readily available, USA Today should have—at the very least—acknowledged that the military claims could be questioned. In contrast with USA Today's approach, McClatchy Newspapers (8/15/07) covered similar Pentagon claims regarding violence in Baghdad. But instead of merely repeating the official claims, McClatchy's Leila Fadel raised questions: "U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim."

The rest of the story: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting