Misleading war casualties graphic. ⇒
11 September 2004, mid-afternoon
CNN, I expected more from you. Well no, that's a lie; I guess I didn't.
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
Yeah. It’s very dodgy, but what do you expect from CNN? Personally, I prefer the CBC or BBC. They are the only two networks I’ve found to date that provide quality journalism.
Also, comparing casualties between wars is a ridiculous endeavour in the first place as the scope, intensity, methods of combat, population, etc. varies greatly between wars. e.g. The Second World War was fought on every continent except South America and Antarctica and lasted 6 years (while 828 less days for the Americans, so they are one to talk about not standing with your friends). On the other hand, Iraq is just a single country, and not a very large one at that.
To CNN’s credit though, the fine print on the “Afghan War” says “includes deaths in war on terror (sic) outside Afghanistan” which implies that the “Iraq War” is mutually exclusive from the “War on Terror” (which really should be capitalized – doesn’t CNN have journalists who know grammar?)
by Ryan on September 11 2004, 4:55 pm #
The graphic might be misleading, but it really doesn’t seem intentional. It’s in the format of a time line and includes the labels ‘Present’ and ‘1775’. Each war has information about casualties and duration. The years are in red, matching the blocks of time. It actually doesn’t say that it’s comparing casualty numbers either so that’s really an assumption of the viewer. The problem lies with making the viewer assume anything. Really, the worst thing is the unexpected orientation, the past being on the right.
I don’t think this graphic is trying to push any particular viewpoint.
by mk on September 11 2004, 5:16 pm #
The entire article is the said graphic and the title “U.S. casualties in other wars”. So certainly a case could be made that the title is imprecise.
An accurate title would perhaps be “a Chronology of American Military Deaths in (Major) Wars Involving The US”.
Since (i) The graphic is a timeline and not graph of deaths (ii) The term “casualties” is ambiguous since casualties can also refer to people who are wounded, captured, etc. (iii) Only American deaths are listed – allied, civilan, and enemy deaths are totally ignored (iv) The dates for the durations of some of the wars are inaccurate, as they only consider US involvement. (Which was relatively minor in some of the conflicts, e.g. WWI).
by Ryan on September 12 2004, 2:30 am #
How exactly is it misleading?
Just because they decided to represent duration rather than actual deaths through the timeline, its misleading? That just means its a poor graph, the information is still the same.
Yes, there are certain ambiguities that really make it a poor example of acceptable information design, but its not inaccurate and hence not misleading.
And Ryan your points abt ignoring Allied troops and only concentrating on official US involvement is irrelevant because the graph only deals with official US casualties (well deaths) in the war. And I wouldn’t call the death of 116,000 Americans in WWI “relatively minor”. Real figures would probably be higher considering that many Americans were actually fighting before official US involvement (Ernest Hemingway for instance).
by Sunny on September 12 2004, 3:00 am #
The graph is misleading because the widths of the bars are not death totals as one would expect, but the duration of each war. What does that have to do with casualities? Nothing really. The graph is really pretty useless. To compare the deaths for each war is a stupid task, which as Ryan has already argued. If they really want to make a comparison, they should present the figures as deaths/time or something like that.
by ramanan on September 12 2004, 4:45 am #
I did not say 116 000 deaths were minor, I said US “involvement” was “relatively minor” (compared to “allied, ..., enemy” involvement).
For most countries, World War I lasted from about 4 August 1914 (e.g. for the British Empire) until 11 November 1918. Moreover, the war occurred on their soil.
The US didn’t declare war until 6 April 1917 and American troops didn’t actually arrive in Europe until about 3 months later.
For example, consider the casualties suffered by most of the other countries involved. For example, the British (Commonweakth) suffered ~ 60 000 casualties (~ 20 000 killed and ~ 40 000 wounded) on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Those numbers include about 0.3% of the population of Newfoundland. Totalty casualties on all sides for the Battle of the Somme are in the millions. And that is just one battle (~ 5 months at one stretch of the Western Front).
American casualties during the entire involvement during the war (1917-1918) were about 0.37%. Compare that to Newfoundland’s casualties suffered during the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1 July 1916). Then extrapolate that over the entire war and you get statistics like 1 out of every 9 French persons were casualties in World War One. Try to imagine 1 in 9 of your friends being killed or seriously injured. That’s pretty staggering.
So by only counting American war deaths in World War I, CNN underestimates the total death and destruction by several orders of magnitude. That was the point I was trying to make.
by Ryan on September 12 2004, 5:40 am #
I think you guys are looking for connections that aren’t implicit in the diagram. I just see a timeline marked with various wars, with duration and location in time visually indicated on the graph. I don’t know the context in which this graph was used, but I don’t see anything about comparisons of death tolls as it stands.
by rishi on September 12 2004, 6:02 am #
I think the graphic should have looked more like this. The graph CNN used is not informative, and is poorly designed. Whether they were trying to misrepresent things as is suggested by the people at Signal vs. Noise is another story I suppose.
by ramanan on September 12 2004, 6:31 am #
So we are supposed to interpret these graphs without understanding
what is being shown? Look at the widths of the bars and make our own
interpretation of what they mean?
I agree with you that its a poor presentation, but no way misleading.
And really if the width should have been proportional to the deaths,
it would be a really long, long graph.
Yes given what they intended to show, the title and the graph are
pretty much useless. Yes useless but still accurate and without the
intention to mislead.
And frankly I don’t think they were trying to make a
point/argument/comparison. It was what I would call an “infograph”.
And a poor one at that.
And Ryan your point is still irrelevant because the graph doesn’t mean to convey any information regarding non-Americans. It only intends to convey American casualties. They are not trying to convey the magnitude of the entire war but just the American involvement. And the graph did a piss-poor job of even that.
Poor design, sure. Malice, no. I am actually feeling sorry for that designer now. (S)he prolly thought it was ingenious!
Now we should stop wasting breath on this.
by Sunny on September 12 2004, 9:42 am #
I’ve already said that it is a rather pointless exercise to compare casualties between wars. But, by focusing on only US military deaths, CNN magnifies the pointless by ignoring a lot of the other suffering inflicted by these wars.
by Ryan on September 12 2004, 4:44 pm #
In response to comment eight, I think the diagram you suggested, though much more clear, is actually less informative than the CNN diagram. Either way, war sucks. Well, unless it’s a flame war. Those can be entertaining.
by rishi on September 14 2004, 2:00 am #