Newspapers relies on the accounts of police officers , so that doesn't give a lot more validity to the numbers.
A newspaper cannot know about all the situations that escalate to a killing and those who don't but would have had the suspect been a male. They simply don't have some omnipotent telescope onto every street of American cities.
Instaed they rely on an unreliable narrator, the police.
"Unsupported theory," what is unsupported is the idea that police provide accurate data. E.g. in my article https://erik-engheim.medium.com/proof-of-systemic-racism-in-america-b8b93c0091d2
I refer to a University of Maryland study on drug charges. It clearly shows that police are lying by habit. Not only are they lying but they are far more likely to lie in relation to black suspects, as demonstrated by the study.
You can find a lot of studies showign that lying by the police in the US is rampant: https://innocenceproject.org/prevalence-police-lying/
Thus saying "unsupported theory," is stretching it far. We may never know exactly what arrest numbers should be for black and whites. That is impossible to know. But that there is a heavy bias against blacks in general among the police is clear.
That this by stroke of magic should not affect black in the case of shootings, would have been utterly bizzare.
Anyway the point I was making was not so much to say that bias is proven as to demonstrate why the "theory" you present simply does not have strong enough evidence as the evidence does not hold sufficient quality. A study only has quality when you have make sure the numbers have been obtained in an unbiased way. All experience points to this not being the case.
Regarding Marx and Engels. I am a social democrat, but I read anything from libertarian, to conservative and communist newspapers. Why, because I have noticed almost none of them give the full truth. They all add their own twists. Yet serious journalism can be found within any ideology. I am sure Marx and Engels made the same observations. It doesn't mean I trust everything I read.
E.g. when I read the economist on privatization of education, I trust that they bring forth many of the benefits. But I find it almost as given that I can count on them leaving out the negative parts. I find those in the socialist/communist newspapers.
Still something like the Economist isn't a propaganda outlet like say FOX News which doesn't even care about truth. They just lie as far as it can serve their ideological agenda. Newpapers like the Economist lies more in terms of omissions, not by presenting deliberate lies.
Either way, you don't have to think writers have ill intentions to be critical. I don't think you or the ones your refer to have ill intentions. But doesn't mean one should not be critical.
