Counting women and children

When journalists count the dead, particularly in war, they often note how many were women and children. An NPR listener recently asked us: Why?

It’s a well-established convention of war reporting, but this listener wondered about the ethics of that choice. Certainly, children are in a vulnerable class of people. Does it elevate women as a valuable group to include them with children? Or does it devalue them as less important? Is it an outdated habit? Or does it offer meaning and context to the tragedy of war?

As with many journalism ethics questions, the answer is complicated. We turned to a couple of different experts both inside NPR and from the world of ethics for analysis.

We also spotlight several stories in a unique NPR investigative series about misleading and incomplete historical markers. — Kelly McBride

Why count women and children’s deaths separately?

L Taylor Phillips wrote on May 28: When civilian casualties occur, why are women designated alongside children? X civilians dead “including women and children.”... Are women more similar to children than to adult men? Or are we just more ok with men dying? This continues to happen in stories even today and is very confusing to me. Is there some background rationale I’m not aware of? Thank you!!

Historically, when discussing the casualties of war, women and children have been considered non-combatants. Men were considered to be part of the military or potentially part of the military. A 1974 resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly called on all member nations to provide women and children with special protection while waging a war.

There are clear flaws in that logic. Women serve in many armies around the world. And all men are not potential soldiers. Nevertheless, children are considered a protected class the world over, and it’s the best proxy for civilian casualties. It’s also particularly compelling for news consumers.

“In war or conflict situations, terrorism situations, I think it’s more offensive to people to kill women and children than it is men — just as a matter of moral standing,” Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist and department head at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine said. “So when you cover it, if you emphasize women and children together as casualties, it’s more gripping to the audience you’re trying to reach. It seems more morally important than if you just lumped everybody together.”

Most cultures prioritize the lives of children over adults, because they represent the future. Women are added to that priority because of their role in child-bearing and their traditional role in child-rearing.

“If you don’t have women, then your children aren’t going to do too well,” Caplan said. This philosophy traditionally informed many communal priorities like who gets into the lifeboat first when a ship is sinking, or who gets rescued first from a burning building.

Also, there are rules of war that specify that armies should take reasonable precautions to avoid harming children. Some of the most heartbreaking war stories describe the travesties that children endure. For instance, recently The New York Times reported that Russia was adopting Ukrainian children to Russian families, a possible war crime. And when Syria attacked its own citizens, it was the images of sickened and dying children that moved the world.

NPR editors told us that when they report on casualties in Gaza they often report the percentage of women and children among the dead because that’s how the Gaza Health Ministry and the United Nations both report the numbers. Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary-General, said in an email that the U.N. gets its figures from local authorities, and those authorities usually choose to delineate women and children.

Supporters of Israel suggest that the Health Ministry is distributing propaganda when they release those numbers. Didrik Schanche, NPR’s chief international editor, told us that journalists and international nonprofits respect the Health Ministry as a reputable source.

“While Gaza is Hamas-led, the organizations and public services within Gaza are supported by the Palestinian Authority…with great involvement by the U.N. and others,” she said. “The Gaza Health Ministry, in that context, has been viewed as the most legitimate source for numbers killed.”

As an agency, they report to both Hamas and to the Palestinian Authority. In the past they have proven reliable. “The casualties they count are people who have been identified either by the hospital authorities or by family members as having been killed,” Schanche said.

Both the Health Ministry and the Israeli government engage in selective editing as they release information. A recent Associated Press report that closely examined the data released by the Gaza Health Ministry found that the proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in the war has declined, from 60% of the dead in late 2023 to less than 40% in more recent months. The AP pointed out that the Gaza Health Ministry continues to overstate the percentage of women and children who are dying, even though their own data contradicts them. It’s not clear if that’s deliberate or an oversight.

Likewise, when Israel releases information about Hamas combatants their soldiers have killed, they do so because critics are pointing out the large number of civilian casualties. In this story, NPR quotes Israel claiming it killed two militants, and the Health Ministry claiming that the IDF strike killed 45 Palestinians.

Counting women and children separately is not unique to Israel’s assault on Hamas. An August 2021 story about violence in Afghanistan described the devastating impact on women and children. A story from March 2020 about Syria’s civil war reported that nearly a million people had been displaced over three months — most of them women and children.

In coverage of Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault, it was widely implied that almost all of the Israelis killed or kidnapped were civilians. More than a third of those that Hamas killed were women. The assailants also killed several dozen Israeli children. And women and children were among the kidnapped.

In early coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NPR and other news media did stories about the number of children who had died. As that war morphed into a more conventional war, with two armies in uniform fighting each other, the vast number of casualties were soldiers. While there are still concerns about Russian war crimes, the number of women and children dying is a much smaller proportion than in Gaza.

Conflicting opinions in the United States over the Israel-Hamas war drive criticisms of the news media’s coverage of the war, including NPR. When facts are in dispute, NPR journalists often tell the audience what both sides are saying and then add in fact-checking and context to help news consumers weigh the claims.

“When we’re citing people like (Israeli Prime Minister) Benjamin Netanyahu or leaders of the Israeli government who say things that perhaps the Palestinian Authority or Palestinian leadership objects to, we report both,” Schanche said. “We are trying to provide our audience with enough facts for them to be able to make a determination. We do not do one-sided stories.”

Context is also important. NPR and other newsrooms report the percentage of women and children dying in Gaza because they believe there is a journalistic purpose to sharing that information with the audience. That purpose is to document that the war in Gaza is taking a disproportionate toll on innocent civilians, when compared to other wars.

NPR remains vigilant in their attempts to accurately describe the number of women and children who are dying in Gaza. Stories that explain the big picture — that 35,000 people have been killed in the war — and describe why independent sources believe that number to be accurate, help the audience understand the complexity. They also help listeners understand why NPR’s reporting is trustworthy. — Kelly McBride with research by Amaris Castillo

'Off the Mark' investigative series

There are more than 180,000 historical markers in the United States, and some of them are misleading about the history they claim to promote. NPR in April launched "Off the Mark," the result of a yearlong investigation into these markers. Investigative correspondent Laura Sullivan and associate producer Nick McMillan analyzed a giant historical marker database crowdsourced by hobbyists from all over the country. They found that, in many cases, the events described on the markers are misrepresented or false. They also found that markers from Confederate heritage groups far outnumber similar markers from Union groups. Hundreds of other markers refer to Native Americans as “savages” or “hostile” or use racial slurs. This sobering interrogation of the stories we tell ourselves about our own history takes us to Utah, Alabama and Minnesota, with additional stories from memberstations. — Amaris Castillo

The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Emily Barske Wood and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, X and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.

Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute