I recently wrote about the death of print newspapers, lamenting their one-foot-and-three-toes-on-the-other-in-the-grave impending demise, and hoping for a more positive future in the digital and internet world. I noted one major advantage of digital newspapers: they aren’t stuck with print deadlines, but can continually update stories, and they have much more room to publish photographs.

That was in my mind when I read this one in the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Suspect named after Lexington man found shot to death in his apartment, police say

By Jeremy Chisenhall | March 29, 2021 | 12:49 PM | Updated March 29, 2021 | 3:45 PM

A 19-year-old has been named as a suspect in the killing of a Lexington man shot to death in his apartment earlier this year, police said Monday.

Juanyah J. Clay, 19, was wanted on a murder warrant, Lexington police said.

Clay is accused of killing 26-year-old Bryan D. Greene, a man police found dead at the Eastridge Apartments on Alumni Drive on Jan. 30.

There’s a bit more at the original, including where anyone who spots Mr Clay can notify the Lexington Police Department of his whereabouts.

But while there’s a wasted photo of a Lexington Police Department crime scene, with an officer stringing yellow crime scene tape around a site, what there isn’t is a photograph of the suspect.^[1]I checked the site again at 1:10 PM EDT, about ten minutes prior to publication of this article.

Juanyah J Clay, from the LEX18 website. Click to enlarge.

Naturally, I wondered: was there no photograph of Mr Clay available to the Herald-Leader? So, naturally, I checked, with a simple Google search for juanyah j clay, and shazamm! not only was his photo available, it was available in other Lexington media. WLEX-TV, Channel 18, the local NBC affiliate had the story with Mr Clay’s picture, in an article dated six minutes before the in in the newspaper, and updated three hours after the LEX18 article. WKYT-TV, Channel 27, the local CBS affiliate, also had an article, with the same photo. WTVQ, Channel 36, the local ABC affiliate had the story, and the photo, as did WDKY, Channel 56, the Fox affiliate.

The Lexington city government website had the photo, as did the Lexington Police Department’s Facebook page.

It seems that everybody had Mr Clay’s photo, everybody except the Herald-Leader. And every story, including the one in the Herald-Leader, had a very similar statement to that on the newspaper’s site:

Police asked anyone with information on Clay’s whereabouts to contact Lexington Police by calling (859) 258-3600. Anonymous tips can be submitted to Bluegrass Crime Stoppers by calling (859) 253-2020, online at www.bluegrasscrimestoppers.com, or through the P3 tips app available at www.p3tips.com.

Now, if people who might happen to spot the suspect are asked to call it in, including in the newspaper’s article, and the newspaper’s website had enough bandwidth available for a generic crime story photo, why didn’t the Herald-Leader include Mr Clay’s photo instead? Wouldn’t Mr Clay’s photograph be much more useful to people who might just happen to see him on the streets than a picture of crime scene tape?

That’s the big question, why? And being the very politically incorrect observer of media bias that I am, one answer springs immediately to mind. Having written about the horrible damage the #woke and #BlackLivesMatter activists have done in the newsrooms of The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer, I instantly thought: to have published the photo of a murder suspect who happens to be black might be seen as racist by the reporter or his editors.

Is there another explanation for this egregious failure of journalism? If there is, it hasn’t occurred to me. Perhaps someone else can give me a better answer, but right now, I’m calling it the way I see it: the newspaper cares more about political correctness than it does journalism.