Half million feared dead in Haiti

www.dailystar.co.uk...

First off, my heart goes out to the country and all those affected - especially those that have lost loved ones.

However, I'd like to point out that The Daily Star is considered a sensationalized tabloid that opts to focus on celebrity rather than truth or things that truly matter. They've been known to exaggerate in order to get attention, and tacking on an extra 400,000 dead people to the presently accepted death toll is a horrible horrible way to gain web traffic to their site.

I know the event was horrific, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. This shouldn't become a morbid contest between news sources.

[edit on 14/1/10 by Evasius]

reply to post by Evasius


I think the key word was "feared", this then makes it an opinion of someone. I know it still seems unacceptable to make misleading titles to gain page-views/sales whatever. But on the otherhand it's probably more likely to raise awareness and help any aid donations.

reply to post by GoldenFleece


The figures are wrong.... its between 30,000 and 50,000 dead not that it makes any difference to the devastation caused...

But yeh i also thought 'wow' when i saw that figure being branded about yesterday....

Last night on skynews i saw the same figures 500 000, think there was a terrible source somewhere, and most sites have corrected it to 100 000....

look out, the zombie population is going to go through the roof!

but seriously, that would be like 5 percent of the population. thats a huge number. even 100,000 is alot if the population is just over 10 million like wiki says. sad

typical British Tabloid comic, lying scum. my heart goes out to the families and friends of those who lost their lives, not a good day for the poor people of the island, still cant help thinking though that the US, had something to do with it, and we can't say that's not possible any more with the HAARP theory, and a good start to the year for their depopulation program.

This might turn out to be a safe assumption people.
Such a huge number living in shanty style mostly make shift
uncoded over and unders. I'm just lending credence to
the facts and by the looks of it the whole city is rubble.
The numbers are possible. Definetly possible.
May God ease their suffering.
If the red cross needs any people I'm there.

reply to post by randyvs


After seeing the news stories i have to agree with you about the poorly built homes these people lived in and where they were situated let alone Haiti being right at the epicentre of Earthquake activity.....

I do wonder why it is i see this type of thing happen with black people whether they live in poor parts of Africa or poor parts of America... why is it that there always seems to be trouble? Like there's always riots or looting or desease going on....

What is wrong with their respective Governments? Corrupt i know you'll say but why is it that this happens?

I ask myself do these people just not want to Educate their own?

It's as if everytime i see this type of thing like grown men sitting on the curb that they just don't seem to want to do anything for themselves...

reply to post by TruthxIsxInxThexMist

I ask myself do these people just not want to Educate their own?

I understand and see the same commonality you inquire of. I have to
say that it looks like greed is taking advantage of the poor and uneducated.
Slum lords? Perhaps an epidemic of them. In rundown nations not really a racial thing so much as I see the same thing a lot in So. America with
Latinos also. Asia too. Slum lords have alot to do with this. Govt's could prevent this. I don't why they don't. The tech is available so....

We must help the people from Haiti as much as we can. The main stream news will report what they want to get the shock factor value as high as possible. I don't believe for a second that there will be over 500,000 deaths. I think the final figures, if reported correctly, will be around 70-75,000.

Originally posted by socrateeze
We must help the people from Haiti as much as we can. The main stream news will report what they want to get the shock factor value as high as possible. I don't believe for a second that there will be over 500,000 deaths. I think the final figures, if reported correctly, will be around 70-75,000.

That is still too many.

This is truly horrific!! I just hope they actually get help! 70-75000 is a lot of people. A lot of families lost mothers, fathers, children, brothers and sisters.

Originally posted by socrateeze
I think the final figures, if reported correctly, will be around 70-75,000.

It's already at an estimated 140,000:


www.guardian.co.uk...

The estimated death toll is now at 200,000. Maybe that "sensationalized tabloid" article wasn't so far off after all:

reply to post by GoldenFleece

The estimated death toll is now at 200,000. Maybe that "sensationalized tabloid" article wasn't so far off after all:

My issue is not with the actual number, it could very well be half a million or more. It is a requirement of responsible journalism to rely on the facts of the moment rather than assumptions about the future. Given that I work in the editorial dept. of a major newspaper group here in Australia, I'm all too aware that serious publications cannot jump to conclusions because you'll not only lose your credibility, the journalist could very well lose their job. The only reason to place such a high death toll in the title of the article is to stand out among others in 'Google News' searches. While perusing through a title list, 'half a million' stands out and will get more traffic than other publications sticking with the presently accepted number.

Here's an example of views we get from a few of our photo galleries accompanying news stories - this is a graph from our latest internal report. It's all about web traffic, views, and getting people to click around while they're on the page. The more people you get visiting, the better your placement on the Google news search.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8df25a98222c.jpg[/atsimg]

Regardless of how right they may be eventually, at the time of publication they were firmly within the realm of sensationalized pseudo-journalism.

Considering this thread wasn't intended to nit-pick about the source, let me say this - the death toll could be well over half a million and we'll never know. Countless victims have already been buried without having been officially counted. It was a colossal tragedy and we don't need assumptive statistics to validate it any more.

[edit on 18/1/10 by Evasius]