The Sun’s Commemoration Of NI

Posted by: Sonja on: October 21, 2009

• In: UK News | World News
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Monday, 19 October 2009, The Sun

I started my work experience at the Times going through the News International papers. I quickly browsed through the Sun, a paper I read about once or twice a year when I find it lying around, when page 23 caught my eye: The article Forgotten Heroes commemorated the soldiers who fell in Northern Ireland and the short list on the sideline surprised me:

According to that list, the death toll of “The Troubles” is higher than the casualties of the Falklands War, both Gulf Wars, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. With the media coverage growing over the last decade, it has given us - society, the public, the audience – the impression that we are surrounded by war and terror and that times are harder and worsening, especially since 9/11. This little stat summary showed the contrary.

I did my own bit of research after that revelation and checked out the Ministry of Defence‘s records of army casualties. I found slight discrepancies between their figures and the Sun’s list, but the main factor remained that Northern Ireland has cost most dearly of all conflicts put together.

It was worrying to read the drastically rising tendency of Afghanistan’s death toll in the last couple of years though. This year alone, more army personnel have died (81) than in the first six years of the conflict (2001-2006, 44 casualties), nearly double. Iraq meanwhile has settled down, from 172 deaths in the first five years to five casualties in the last two years. That explains the media’s change of focus over the last year or so, away from Iraq.

But just because there are conflicts at present and we cannot get away from their coverage in the daily news, it does not mean the situtation is worse than ever before. We are not allowed to forget the past, that there have been much costlier conflicts that have been resolved and harder times we have come through, just less cameras and reporters to cover them.

Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, British Army, Conflict, Death, Falklands, Gulf Wars, IRA, Iraq, Ministry of Defence, News International, Northern Ireland, Soldiers, The Sun, The Troubles, Troops, War