Fox 17 fails to verify claims made by Congressman Ehlers

Analysis:

This story is based upon a town hall forum held at the Ford Museum in Grand Rapids and hosted by 3rd Congressional District Representative Vern Ehlers. The Fox 17 story does mention that a variety of issues were raised during the Question and answer portion of the forum, but only mentions Katrina, trade with China and Global warming in passing. Several questions posed by the audience and particularly by members of the group ACTIVATE focused on the ongoing US occupation of Iraq. Only one of the audience members are cited in the story and it is only part of the question. You can hear the rest of the question and the whole forum that was recorded by Media Mouse. The question was referring to the British journal The Lancet, but the Fox 17 story excluded the source, even though the questioner stated where the 650,000 Iraq dead figure had come from. The response by Congressman Ehlers that channel 17 provided was an edited response, where the Congressman makes claims about the number of Iraqis killed under Saddam Hussien as opposed to the US Occupation. However, the Congressman does not provide a source for his claim and WXMI 17 never bothers to investigate those claims either. Instead, the story ends with a mention that there was a high school art award ceremony after the forum.

Story:

News Reader: A group in West Michigan had the chance to go one-on-one with Congressman Vern Ehlers today. An open floor discussion at the Ford Museum this morning. The Congressman took questions from a variety of topics ranging from rebuilding Katrina homes to trade with China and global warming. The hot topic overall? The war in Iraq.

Audience Member: The British journal has said that at least 650,000 Iraqis have died since the beginning of the war. And you’ve signed off on all of this, and those would constitute war crimes. How would you respond to that?

Congressman Ehlers: To the best of my knowledge there are considerably fewer people killed in this war so far–I’m talking about Iraqis–then were killed by Saddam Hussein during his regime. Neither one justifies the other, I’m just saying it’s a tough country.

News Reader: Congressman Ehlers also honored local students for outstanding academic achievement and announced the winners of the annual Congressional high school art competition.