I've filtered it down to only where race is mentioned in the title itself. Plenty of results for the intended query. Notably, there were zero results (in this search, and judging by the title only, in the first ~5 pages) for white victims - it correctly parsed "killed by white" to include only white perpetrators. Results for "killed by black site:apnews.com":
Again filtered for only cases reporting on killings, where race is mentioned in the title. In the first ~5 pages, there were zero results (judging by title alone) about black perpetrators - all the stories were about black victims, even though it had no trouble parsing the query correctly when asking about white perpetrators.
This is despite the fact that in 2019 (the most recent year for which the FBI published this data [1]), there were 566 black-on-white killings, and 246 white-on-black killings (where the FBI includes latinos in "white"). So it's not that the AP's reporting simply reflects reality. Their journalists are simply following the official AP style on race - only identify it when it is "pertinent" [2]. It just so happens that when a white kills a black, race is pertinent, and when a black kills a white, it is a "random act of violence".
[2] Consider carefully when deciding whether to identify people by race. Often, it is an irrelevant factor and drawing unnecessary attention to someone’s race or ethnicity can be interpreted as bigotry. There are, however, occasions when race is pertinent - https://web.archive.org/web/20220715000414/https://www.apsty...
Yes that’s a bit disturbing when presented like that.
I doubt the perpetrator being white was a necessary part of the headline in all those stories. Though I definitely don’t think including race in the story more often would make things better.
Thanks for doing the work and bringing the receipts. I don't consider this some "grand conspiracy" in the sense that it's well coordinated amongst organizations. It's just been politically expedient to act this way in the last decade or so.
The false appearance of conspiracy can easily arise when you have numerous people with roughly aligned ideologies and incentives independently responding to similar stimuli in whatever way they personally think is the most prudent. That's probably what's going on here.
This idea was explained by Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent.
No, a conspiracy has a very specific definition that has gotten lost in all the noise:
noun (plural conspiracies)
a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful: she served five years in prison for taking part in a conspiracy to sell stolen art works.
The key is that it's a secret plan. People have to have gotten together to meet, in secret, and agree on a plan. This is why true grand conspiracies are so rare: it's hard to get a lot of people together in one room, get them all to agree on a plan, and get them all to keep it a secret. The more people involved, the more likely there will be a leaker.
Criminal conspiracies are quite common though. Of course, those can involve as few as 2 people making a plan to commit a crime together.
People who live far outside of the mainstream do often come to believe that mainstream society is all one grand conspiracy. That perception is an illusion, created by the mechanism I described.
