Skip to content

Conflict reporting – are injuries no longer news?

The true impact of war – particularly on people injured by explosive weapons – is being obscured by increasingly patchy reporting.

Conflict reporting – are injuries no longer news?
Yemeni children with prosthetic limbs, October 2018. | Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images
Published:

There are some predictable truths of war.

There is that old cliché: the first casualty of war is the truth.

Another is that, as conflict deepens and worsens, war reporting becomes less accurate and less specific. The fog of battle mists up the media’s lens. Only the biggest, most shocking massacres make the headlines. Along the way, the recording of the injured drops off.