Even then, there's the theory/circumstantial "evidence" that Google's indexing is a big farce. Forgot where I saw the video, but someone pointed out that the average person only relies on the 1st page or two of search results. To try to go beyond that, most searches very quickly drop from "millions of results" down to a few hundred/thousand at best. Going beyond the first couple of search result pages, the page count seemingly drops off a cliff.
However, there are independent engines out there. The first one that pops to mind is Gigablast, which does it's own indexing/crawling.
If you've got some time to kill, check out some stuff related to the "Dead Internet Theory". While I cant say how accurate the information presented may be, it certainly opens up the idea that there's something funky about the internet and how we perceive it.
As unfortunate as it is, migrant boats wrecking is common enough that it's not really "newsworthy" in terms of what grabs people's attention. Especially on a global scale. Similar to how a murder in somewhere like Maine would make the news, but in NYC it's just another day.