Category Archives: Journolism

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Are journalists today trying less to inform public minds than steer public opinions?

As we have previously noted, McClatchy’s mugshot policy is:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness. In fact, some police departments have started moving away from taking/releasing mugshots as a routine part of their procedures.

To address these concerns, McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online, or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print.

Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor. Editors considering an exception should ask:

  • Is there an urgent threat to the community?
  • Is this person a public official or the suspect in a hate crime?
  • Is this a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?

If an exception is made, editors will need to take an additional step with the Pub Center to confirm publication by making a note in the ‘package notes‘ field in Sluglife.

Jacob Heil, uncredited photo in the Lexington Herald-Leader, February 22, 2019. Photo cropped by DRP. Click to enlarge.

On Wednesday, October 13th, we pointed out that the Lexington Herald-Leader kept publishing the courtroom photo of Jacob Heil, the 21-year-old former University of Kentucky student charged with reckless homicide and driving under the influence of alcohol for killing 4-year-old Marco Lee Shemwell while his family and he were standing beside Cooper Drive near Scoville Drive. Mr Heil allegedly veered off the road, striking the boy and killing him.

The photo of Mr Heil that the Herald-Leader has been using was a press pool photo, and in it, he is wearing a face mask. However, the very first line of the text in this story, published on February 22, 2019 — before the McClatchy Mugshot Policy went into effect — in which Mr Heil’s full face photo is shown, in a full width of the story format.

Remember: the McClatchy policy states, “The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever,” and Mr Heil has not yet been convicted of any crime! He is not an urgent threat to the community, he is not a public official or suspect in a hate crime, is not a serial killer or the suspect in a high-profile crime. Why, then, is the newspaper festooning its website with his courtroom photo?

Jymie S. Salahuddin, 53, from Lexington station WTVQ.

In an article by Herald-Leader reporter Karla Ward, also published on October 13th, Lexington man sentenced to 21 years in prison for cocaine trafficking, the newspaper declined to print the publicly available photo of a convicted felon. Since federal law requires that Jymie S. Salahuddin, 53, serve at least 85% of his 262 month sentence, he will not be eligible for release for 18½ years, when he would be 71 years old. I’m not certain how an 18-year-old mugshot would harm an elderly convict on his release. Mr Salahuddin is not a charged but not convicted person, but one who pleaded guilty. It’s not like the paper needed to save bandwidth; they included a stock photo of jail cell bars.

So, now we come to this:

Kentucky man sentenced to jail for involvement in Capitol riot

By Christopher Leach | Wednesday, October 13, 2021 | 3:44 PM EDT

A man from Cave City has been sentenced for his involvement in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Robert Bauer, a Kentucky resident, was identified through photos of himself during the Capitol riot, according to the FBI. This photo was included in a criminal complaint filed against him. PHOTO VIA FBI. Click to enlarge.

Robert Bauer, 44, was sentenced to 45 days in jail, 65 hours of community service and $500 restitution, the Louisville Courier Journal reported.

As part of a deal with prosecutors, Bauer pleaded guilty to a charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, according to court records. Bauer originally faced four charges for his involvement in the riot that injured hundreds of police officers.

The judge could have sentenced him to a maximum of six months in prison, a fine of no more than $5,000 and supervised release of no more than one year, according to court records.

The plea agreement document shows that Bauer agreed to the plea in late June.

In other words, as an old UK professor of mine, Gerard Silberstein, used to say, not much of a much. Yet, unlike Mr Salahuddin, whose crimes were so serious that he will spend at least 18½ years behind bars, the Herald-Leader decided to publish Mr Bauer’s photograph.

And while Mr Bauer now stands convicted, the Newspaper published his photo on January 15, 2021, January 30, 2021, and March 3, 2021, all when he was charged but not yet convicted of anything.

The McClatchy Mugshot Policy was put into effect the previous summer, so all photos were in violation of the policy.

So, what might be the distinguishing difference in these photos published and not published? There’s one very obvious one: Messrs Heil and Bauer are white, while Mr Salahuddin is black.

Thud!

Could that be it? Could it really be that simple? Remember, the McClatchy Mugshot Policy is based on two ideas:

  • Those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever; and
  • Inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color.

At the very least, these statements could mean that editors, even just subconsciously, think that publishing photos of white suspects is simply not as harmful as publishing those of black suspects. But, at a more pernicious level, it could mean, as the Sacramento Bee, the lead McClatchy newspaper, put it, publishing mugshots:

  • Perpetuat(es) stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

If that’s the case — and that last part was left put of the McClatchy policy in general — then might some McClatchy editors, at some papers, think that publishing photos of white suspects or convicted criminals while not doing so for black suspects or convicted criminals could actively steer the public away from such stereotypes, and thus be considered, at least to the left-inclined mind, an affirmative good?

If you suspect that I used the adjective “affirmative” deliberately, to bring Affirmative Action to your mind, you’d be right!

Journalists tend to have an elevated opinion of their place in society; the constitutional protection of freedom of the press has led many of them to think that they are some sort of super-duper constitutional guardians. Is it that much of a further leap for some of them to think that their role in society is to guide society into what hey would see as rightthink?

But journalists can only be respected when they tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That is sadly lacking among today’s journolists.

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The whole truth doesn’t interest newspapers these days

While checking on Lexington Police Department data to update the information in Bullets flying in the Bluegrass State, I found that the police had finally updated the city’s shootings investigations page. In 2020, a year which saw the city set its annual murder record with 34 homicides, there were also 140 non-fatal shootings. As of October 10, 2020, there had been 107 non-fatal shootings.

And the thugs are keeping pace, as there have been 109 non-fatal shootings as of October 10, 2021!

Out of 140 non-fatal shootings in Lexington last year, the victim was white 32 times, and listed as Hispanic on four occasions. Out of 140 non-fatal shootings, 104 of the victims, 74.29%, were black, in a city the 2020 census determined was 68.3% white; 14.9% black; 4.2% Asian or Pacific Islander; 7.1% two or more races; and 9.2% Hispanic or Latino.

So far in 2021, there have been 17 non-fatal shooting victims listed as white, and another 10 listed as Hispanic, leaving 82, or 75.23%, listed as being black.

Naturally, the journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading at a politically correct newspaper like the Lexington Herald-Leader won’t tell its readers this!

The Sacramento Bee, the lead newspaper of the McClatchy Company MNI: (%), led the way for the group, of which the Herald-Leader is part, in deciding not to publish mugshots:

    Publishing these photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

Further down:

    And the San Francisco Police Department earlier this month announced it will no longer release mugshots, unless the public is in imminent danger.

    “This policy emerges from compelling research suggesting that the widespread publication of police booking photos in the news and on social media creates an illusory correlation for viewers that fosters racial bias and vastly overstates the propensity of Black and brown men to engage in criminal behavior,” Police Chief William Scott said in a statement.

Perhaps that correlation is not so illusory!

The data are there, but the Herald-Leader reporters and editors do not follow the data, do not investigate something that an elderly man, namely me, was able to find sitting in his home three counties away, and so far out in the boondocks that I can’t get a dead-trees copy of the paper delivered.

Jymie S. Salahuddin, 53, from Lexington station WTVQ.

The McClatchy Mugshot Policy, which the Herald-Leader follows, claims that publishing mugshots of people charged with crimes is harmful, if they are not actually convicted of the crimes for which they have been arrested. Yet, in an article by Karla Ward, Lexington man sentenced to 21 years in prison for cocaine trafficking, the newspaper declined to print the publicly available photo of a convicted felon. Since federal law requires that Jymie S. Salahuddin, 53, serve at least 85% of his 262 month sentence, he will not be eligible for release for 18½ years, when he would be 71 years old. I’m not certain how an 18-year-old mugshot would harm an elderly convict on his release.

Not that it would matter: he’s not a charged but not convicted person, but one who pleaded guilty. It’s not like the paper needed to save bandwidth; they included a stock photo of jail cell bars.

Jacob Heil; photo by WLEX-TV press pool footage.

And the newspaper has assigned reporter Jeremy Chisenhall to sit in and cover the trial of Jacob Heil, 21, who is on trial for reckless homicide and DUI after he was involved in a crash which killed a 4-year-old pedestrian. The Herald-Leader has published at least two stories about the ongoing trial, including Mr Heil’s photograph. Though that phot shows him wearing a face mask, the paper published a full-face photo of him on February 22, 2019.

The paper is willing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, when it comes Mr Heil’s trial, on charges of which he could be acquitted, yet when the statistics point to a significant racial disparity in crime and victimhood in the city, all of these well-educated and experienced reporters and editors keep their keyboards closely in check.

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↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.