Martyr vs. Just Plain Dead

Since there is a lot of dying going on these days, news channels have to spice up the act of dying to differentiate between a death and a death. However it is very confusing to have a standard classification of deaths as each channel categorizes the dead differently. US troops or contractors are always just plain dead, same applies to Israelis whether they are military or civilians. Palestinians and Iraqi civilians are always martyrs, except on LBC. LBC has everyone as just plain dead except May Chidiac who is a Living Martyr. The earthquake dead are neither martyrs nor just plain dead, they are Victims. Now on to the most confusing one, Iraqi insurgents can be both. They are just plain dead when they blow themselves up killing civilians, who I reiterate are always martyrs. However, sometimes they can be martyrs if they die as a result of an Apache attack. This has changed over the course of last year as Iraqi insurgents used to be mostly martyrs, but they have been downgraded gradually to just plain dead. The newest category is when someone “commits suicide”, these deaths are called shredded evidence.