Ashley Tate catches another example of how the media use passive voice constructions to make enemy losses sound like generic violence. This one’s from CNN:

At least 29 people have been killed in the latest bloodshed in the escalating conflict in southern Afghanistan, according to the U.S.-led coalition. The coalition command in Kabul said Wednesday that 24 insurgents, four Afghan National Army soldiers and one Afghan National Police officer were killed late Tuesday in the Tarin Kowt District of Uruzgan province.

Tate writes, “In case you missed it, the real story is that a patrol of Afghan soldiers were attacked by Taliban terrorists and the Talibanis were slaughtered with minimal losses to our allies.”

Meanwhile, StrategyPage takes a different approach:

May 24, 2006: The last two weeks have seen an ambitious Taliban offensive shot to pieces. As many as a thousand Taliban gunmen, in half a dozen different groups, have passed over the Pakistani border, or been gathered within Afghanistan, and sent off to try and take control of remote villages and districts. The offensive was a major failure, with nearly half the Taliban getting killed, wounded or captured. Afghan and Coalition casualties were much less, although you wouldn’t know that from the mass media reports (which made it all look like a Taliban victory). The Taliban faced more mobile opponents, who had better intelligence. UAVs, aircraft and helicopters were used to track down the Taliban, and catch them. Thousands of Afghan troops and police were in action, exposing some of them to ambush, as they drove to new positions through remote areas.

Which lead paragraph more specifically and accurately decribes what happened: “people have been killed” or “offensive shot to pieces”?