Thread by @marcowenjones

1/ Yesterday a couple of news channels, including @ESPNFC reported on a #Bundesliga game where people unfurled a flag in protest of the Qatar World Cup. It said '15,000 deaths for 5,760 minutes of football - shame on you”. This is a history of where that 15000 figure came from

2/ Firstly, the 15,000 figure comes from Amnesty. It's the total number of deaths of all non-Qataris of all ages and all causes between 2010 and 2019 - not excess deaths. This mortality rate actually is quite low. See this thread >

https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1589148335377907712

3/ The 15,000 number originated in around August 2021, in this important report about poor death reporting and failing to investigate unexplained deaths. amnesty.org/en/latest/news…

4/ It was only in December 2021 that the figure was picked up, by German outlet @sportstudio , but it was periodically resurrected, getting highly retweeted in March 2022 and August 2022. Yesterday, it went viral again partly thanks to @ESPNFC . What's interesting is

5/ the trend was originally mostly confined to German. As the graph below shows, most of tweets using the figure in European languages were German (orange). Only yesterday did it seem to break out into Spanish and English (green)

6/ Of course, while the figure is itself misleading, it was also re-interpreted as 15,000 people dying while building the stadiums, or simply as an excess death statistic - which it is not. See below for example >

7/ Below, some of the most influential accounts spreading this misleading and sensationalist news story are well-established sporting news outlets including @ESPNFC and @sportstudio

8/ I did a similar thread about another misleading figure (6,500 deaths) that you can see here. While the '15,000' appears to be less widespread, it has persisted over the past year and is now breaking out beyond the German press

https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1581212669637369858

9/ So while a lot of European media continues its inexplicably poor reporting, I'd recommend reading this by @vanish_forever - an incredible (and sobering) review of the past ten years migrant-rights.org/2022/11/worker… .

10/ Poor death reporting in Qatar and confusing statistics make occupational death numbers difficult to come by, but the ILO so far have perhaps the most accurate analysis ilo.org/global/about-t…