I have seen it numerous times. An article is posted online about an instance that is suspected to be racial. No evidence is presented that race was indeed a factor. Then they bring up a completely unrelated instance in which a white police officer shot an unarmed black man.
Whenever I see this, I think, "Was this written by the Associated Press?" I look to the byline. Yep.
How is this relevant? In short, it's not. Corrupt businesses and organizations have found that fueling racial tensions is good to bring in traffic. Racism has been especially good for their bottom line.
Think about this for a moment. Which of the following is going to impact you more, a disagreement between a black man and a white man, or a disagreement between a black man and a white man after a white police officer shoots an unarmed black man.
Organizations such as the Associated Press try to use their influence to push a narrative, regardless of validity. Instead of focusing on relevant facts to ensure that we are well informed and know what we need to know, they want to influence our beliefs and opinions. There are many tactics they embrace to accomplish this goal. One of them is to shift topics. In some cases, they inject one out-of-place sentence that is unrelated to the story being reported. It's disturbing that more people don't call them out for this behavior.
In the case of issues such as race, unprofessional journalists sometimes have to inject strong racial feelings in order to make their personal views seem relevant. They do this by going off topic. This can change the tone of an entire article. Instead of looking at the realities of a situation, we allow our emotions to skew our perspectives. The media has control over which emotions to fuel, so they can potentially sway beliefs and opinions more than if they embraced a more informative role.
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