Oh no Reuters, don’t listen to the military

So you’ve got four versions of the casualty counts from a US helicopter strike on Hilla (Iraq).

• Version 1: “at least 11 people were killed and 18 wounded in the strike”
• Version 2: “29 people were killed and 39 were wounded…six houses were destroyed”
• Version 3: “the combined total of dead and wounded was in the dozens”
• Version 4: “were not certain how many people had been killed but denied that there were large numbers of casualties….We’re still checking how many enemy personnel were killed. The initial report I had was four.”

The first three of these versions are from anonymous police sources, the same Iraqi police that the press loves to disparage, and the last is from the US military. At best you can say that there is an unconfirmed casualty report that may or may not have included civilians. At worst you can say that the police sources are so vague and/or contradictory as to be unusable.

So what is Reuters’ headline?

Many killed by U.S. strike in Iraq’s Hilla: sources

…with the implication (via the wording and focus of the article) that “many” includes indiscriminate killing of noncombatants. Nice work, Reuters.