Redaction in Action

[andrewducker]

Chatting to spidermonster yesterday and he forwarded me bits of a BBC article that started

Gen Caldwell said Wednesday night was the first time US forces had "definite unquestionable information" they could strike the target without causing collateral damage to civilians.

and finished

They were followed "very shortly thereafter" by US ground forces, who "swept through the site and identified six persons that had been killed in that strike at that time". The dead included a woman and a child, and two others still to be identified.

Which makes sense only if you don't count Iraqi children as civilians.

I then popped over to the BBC to see this for myself. To find that some articles mentioned the child, but the one that he'd sent me the clipping from didn't. And then, when I went back to look at the article that mentioned the child it had been updated to read

On Thursday he said the six bodies included a child, but on Friday he said his information had changed. There were three dead men, three dead women, and no children.

All of which makes you wonder. It really does...

Comments

[ripperlyn.livejournal.com]

But what about people who are 16, 17, 18, 19? That's a bit of a grey area, isn't it? If you're 16 and you've grown up in a warzone, or even lived in one the last few years, surely your outlook and experience are going to be different.

When my cousin died, he was 18, so the article in the paper called him a 'man.' But think about the 18 year olds you know and how many of them you'd really classify as 'adults.' Articles like these don't really ever say 'young adult' or 'older teenager,' there are only 2 categories to put them in.

Not that I'm saying it isn't fishy. Just playing devil's advocate.

[whotheheckami.livejournal.com]

Give 'em a chance and they'll redact the whole thing...
US in Iraq? No, we wre never there ;@)

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

6 people killed, thats the constant. Are the ages so important? Are we being haunted here by the notion that some deaths are more deserved than others?

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

When the member of the American military announced that "the person with the most blood on his hands in Iraq is dead", I honestly _did_ think of Bush....