Analysis: NYT, WaPo emphasize white officer's race in Tulsa shooting — but not black officer's race in Charlotte shooting

For police officers involved in fatal police shootings, the New York Times and the Washington Post bury news of the officer's race if he or she is black but emphasize the officer's race if he or she is white, according to an analysis from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The analysis focused on the two most recent shootings of black men, both occurring last week. The first happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a white officer shot a black man. The second happened in Charlotte, North Carolina, where a black officer shot a black man.

The New York Times office building in Manhattan. (Getty Images/DON EMMERT/AFP)

More from the Daily Caller News Foundation:

In a random sampling of 11 articles from The New York Times on the Tulsa shooting, TheDCNF found that 63 percent of articles mentioned Shelby’s white race and Crutcher’s black race in the same sentence. Thirty-six percent of the articles did not mention the officer’s race, but emphasized that the victim was a black man shot by a police officer.

TheDCNF examined 10 random articles from The New York Times’ coverage of the Charlotte shooting. Only 40 percent of the articles mentioned that the officer involved was black. The rest of the articles sampled referred to the shooting as a black man being shot by an officer.

An analysis of statistics for randomly selected articles from The Washington Post reveals less evidence of bias than the Times, but could point to a slant. Out of 17 articles on the Tulsa white-on-black shooting, 17 percent mention both the race of the officer and man involved. Eighty-two percent of articles just mentioned the race of the victim.

On the Charlotte shooting, TheDCNF examined 14 random articles from The Washington Post. Only 14 percent of the articles sampled mentioned that the officer involved was black. The other 86 percent of articles ignored the officer’s race, but mentioned that the victim was black.

The analysis found that with the newspapers' coverage of each shooting story, the fact that the Tulsa officer was white and the man she shot was black was almost immediately mentioned. But in the Charlotte story, the officer's race, which is black, was typically buried deep into the story.

In some cases, the media outlets would even mention the Tulsa officer's race in the headline. However, the analysis did not find any stories where the Charlotte officer's race was used in the headline.

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