How to hide 650,000 corpses

If we are to take seriously the claim that we live in a civilised society, then we must be able to discuss honestly our society's responsibility for crimes against humanity.

On October 11, British news organisations began reporting the results of an article published by the Lancet medical journal: Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey. The study was led by Gilbert Burnham of the prestigious Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. The survey findings were staggering.

"We estimate that, as a consequence of the coalition invasion of March 18, 2003, about 655,000 Iraqis have died above the number that would be expected in a non-conflict situation, which is equivalent to about 2.5 per cent of the population in the study area. About 601,000 of these excess deaths were due to violent causes."

The data was collected by eight Iraqi doctors from 1,849 households comprising 12,801 individuals in 47 population clusters across Iraq, a country of 24 million people. This is the same data-collecting method used for conducting opinion polls in the west - though much lower samples are deemed acceptable. In the US, for example, polls are based on interviews with just 1,000 people out of a population of 300 million.

The British and American governments dismissed the Johns Hopkins report out of hand. President George Bush said: "The methodology is pretty well discredited." General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said: "I have not seen the study. That 650,000 number seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I've not seen a number higher than 50,000. And so, I don't give that much credibility at all."

Bush's claim that the methodologywas discredited is flatly contradicted by a long list of epidemiologists, biostatisticians and mortality experts. Richard Brennan, head of health programmes at the New York-Based International Rescue Committee, said: "This is the most practical and appropriate methodology for sampling that we have in humanitarian conflict zones."

John Zogby, whose New York-based polling agency, Zogby International, has done several surveys in Iraq since the war began, said: "The sampling is solid. The methodology is as good as it gets. It is what people in the statistics business do."

And Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancet, commented: "It is worth emphasising the quality of this latest report, as judged by four expert peers who provided detailed comments to editors."

So, according to experts the study was scientifically credible. There was nothing "controversial" about it. Yet the politicians and generals responsible for the bloodbath in Iraq simply dismissed it. And the British media helped them do so.

Newspapers responded to the survey with a remarkable mixture of scepticism and indifference. Only the Independent and Guardian made the report their front page lead stories. The Times devoted just a third of a page to the story - on page 45. The Daily Telegraph had 422 words on page 5.

Even the Independent and Guardian gave the story a fraction of the coverage one might have expected given the shocking nature of the death toll, publishing a handful of news reports and mentions in editorials before quickly dropping the story.

A Media Lens database search of British newspapers (October 20) says it all. Our search found that the words 'Jack Straw' and 'veil' had been mentioned in 422 articles over the previous nine days. The words 'Madonna' and 'adoption' had been mentioned in 312 articles. The words 'Iraq' and 'Lancet' had been mentioned in just 53 articles across the entire British press.

What about the BBC? On October 12, the early evening news anchor Natasha Kaplinsky described the Lancet figures as "shocking and controversial". On the News at Ten, anchor Huw Edwards explained that the report was "controversial" and that while the report was serious the figures were "controversial though". Reporter David Shukman declared: "We'll never know the figures, it's too dangerous [in Iraq]."

To its credit BBC's Newsnight covered the story that evening in depth, even interviewing one of the study's co-authors, Les Roberts. But Newsnight has failed to return to the topic.

We have been monitoring UK media performance for five years. This response to a credible report that our government's policy has resulted in the deaths of fully 655,000 Iraqis is the most astonishing example of media conformity to power we have yet seen.

The lesson is clear: no crimes of state are too extreme for mainstream journalism. There is no limit to its willingness to bury the depredations of power. ·