Media reports from the British press in the aftermath of Wednesday's truck and knife attack on Parliament,

resulting in the death of at least four people in catastrophic injuries to more than a dozen more,

have focused in on the identity of the perpetrator in vague terms.

We knew, according to the telegraph, that the attacker was described by witnesses as, quote,

an Asian guy in about his 40s carrying a knife about seven or eight inches long.

The Daily Star of the UK called the suspect a black or Asian man who is spotted running

with an eight-inch knife. The daily mirror called him, quote, reportedly, Asian in appearance.

The picture of the suspect shows that he is, in fact, some guy from the Middle East or Pakistan.

In America, Asian has a different connotation than it does in the British press.

It generally means people of Pakistani or Indian descent, not people from Southeast Asia, as it does in the United States.

It's also often a cover for Islamic background.

The press will generally avoid talking about the religion of a suspect in favor of focusing in on ethnicity,

and then they will broaden out the ethnic label to include people who aren't Pakistani in order to create the impression that the Pakistani perpetrator might not be a

Muslim. In May 2012, the BBC reported that groups representing Sikhs and Hindus complain to the media

about the use of the term Asian to apply to nine Pakistani suspects erected for grooming girls

for sex. The network of Sikh organizations UK, the Hindu Forum of

Britain, the Sikh Media Monitoring Group UK, accused the media of unwillingness to mention the, quote,

disproportionate representation of Muslims in such cases, and the non-Muslim identities of the victims,

calling the Asian label, quote, unfair to other communities of Asian responsibility, adding,

quote, we believe that in this case,

the government itself is sanctioning the use of the term Asian as a way of clouding responsibility.

The same pattern held true in reporting of the Rothorham incident, where British authorities,

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