Tag Archives: #Herald-Leader

Posted on by

Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader chooses to break McClatchy policy, and publish photo of a criminal suspect Why? I suspect it's because he's white

It has been awhile since we last mentioned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy:

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.

Oddly enough, I have never been able to find the McClatchy mugshot policy officially published anywhere, but after the apparently internal memo went out, but on August 20, 2020, then Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a McClatchy newspaper, reporter Nichole Manna published it in a tweet.

The Lexington Herald-Leader is another McClatchy newspaper, so you would assume that that newspaper would follow the policy, right?

‘Brazen theft.’ Former University of Kentucky student accused in $67 million fraud

by Bill Estep | Thursday, February 16, 2023 | 11:27 AM EST | Updated: Friday, February 17, 2023 | 11:21 AM EST

Screenshot of Herald-Leader logo and accompanying photo, taken at 11:45 AM EST on Friday, February 17, 2023. Click to enlarge.

A former Lexington resident and University of Kentucky student has been accused of siphoning $28 million from a company and using it for expensive personal purchases, including a $16 million jet and a luxury box at a sports arena.

Christopher S. Kirchner was charged with wire fraud in a federal criminal complaint.

Authorities arrested him Valentine’s Day at his home in a gated community in Westlake, Texas, according to court records.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a separate civil complaint against Kirchner, 35, alleging he lied over and over to investors in raising $67 million for his company, Slync.io, and drained much of it for himself even as the company didn’t meet payroll at times.

“This case concerns an offering fraud orchestrated by Kirchner . . . involving his brazen theft of over $28 million of investor funds to fund his lavish lifestyle,” SEC attorneys said in the complaint.

Read more here.

So, Mr Kirshner is accused of a rather serious felony, and the story is of some interest in Kentucky, but I have to ask: under which of the three mugshot policy exceptions does Mr Kirshner’s case fall?[1]In writing this story, I initially saved Mr Kirshner’s photo from the story itself, but decided instead to take a screenshot, including the newspaper’s logo, to prove what I have stated, … Continue reading Is Mr Kirshner an urgent threat to the community? He had his initial court appearance, in Texas, earlier this week, and was released pending a trial. Clearly federal law enforcement in Texas did not consider him to be an urgent enough threat to hold him without bail. Is he a public official or the suspect in a hate crime? No, he is a private individual, and no hate crime is either charged or alleged. Is he “a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?” He isn’t charged with killing anyone, and wire fraud isn’t exactly what anyone would call a “high-profile crime.”

So, why did what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal break policy and include Mr Kirshner’s photograph? There’s nothing in reporter Bill Estep’s story which indicated that Mr Kirshner is a previously convicted criminal, and if he is acquitted — and remember: he is legally innocent until proven guilty — he will have been harmed, according to the McClatchy policy statement that “The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever.”

Mr Estep has been with the newspaper for a long, long time; it would seem improbable that he would have been unaware of the McClatchy policy. If Mr Estep went ahead and published this story, under his own byline, without getting approval of Editor Peter Baniak, he again violated policy. Whether Mr Baniak actually did approve the publication of Mr Kirshner’s photograph is unknown.

As regular readers know, The First Street Journal does not share the McClatchy policy’s concerns, and regularly publishes photos of those accused of crimes. I do not object to the newpaper publishing Mr Kirshner’s photograph; I do object to the hypocrisy being shown by publishing it.

There is, of course, more. As we have previously reported, the newspaper has previously published photos of white suspects, including this, and especially this one, in which the mugshots of five white convicted criminals were published, out of nearly two dozen inmates affected.

Let me be clear about this: my strong impression is that the editor and staffers of the Lexington Herald-Leader have been far more guarded about publishing photographs of black criminal suspects and convicted criminals than white suspects and convicted criminals. I suspect, but cannot prove, that this is more than just an unconscious bias, but a deliberate policy choice, because these ‘exceptions’ to the policy have occurred far too often to be obvious coincidences.

References

References
↑1 In writing this story, I initially saved Mr Kirshner’s photo from the story itself, but decided instead to take a screenshot, including the newspaper’s logo, to prove what I have stated, in case it is edited out later.
Posted on by

Journolists: how the credentialed media are limiting reporting to change people’s minds

In my seemingly endless crusade against an irresponsible credentialed media, I have noted, several times, that the Lexington Herald-Leader has been mostly reluctant to publish photos of criminal suspects, even when a criminal suspect was still at large and it was possible that publishing his photo might help the city police to find and arrest him.

Researching the topic further, I found that the Sacramento Bee has done the same thing, and explained it:

Why The Sacramento Bee will no longer publish police ‘mugshots,’ with limited exceptions

By Ryan Lillis | July 9, 2020 | 2:08 PM PDT | Updated July 9, 2020 | 2:24 PM PDT

The Sacramento Bee announced Wednesday it will limit the publication of police booking photos, surveillance photos and videos of alleged crimes, and composite sketches of suspects provided by law enforcement agencies.

Now, I knew, as soon as I saw the story, that the Bee must be a McClatchy paper, just from the website layout. A search of the Herald-Leader’s website failed to turn up anything similar, but Wikipedia noted that the Bee is the “flagship” of the McClatchy papers.

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.

The policy is effective immediately and will be applied moving forward.

The obvious question is: how would publishing photos of criminal suspects “disproportionately (harm) people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community” unless those photos showed a ‘disproportionate’ number of ‘people of color’ being arrested? How could such ‘perpetuate stereotypes about who commits crimes’ unless those stereotypes are accurate?

Of course, the Herald-Leader was perfectly willing to publish one recent mugshot, but, not to worry, that photo wouldn’t disproportionately harm a person of color.

Then we have Trudy Rubin, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer:

As journalists worldwide face repression, GOP lies threaten U.S. media future

Around the world, journalists are killed with bullets, but in the U.S., Fox News undermines media with endless lies about COVID-19 and election fraud.

By Trudy Rubin | May 4, 2021

Monday was World Press Freedom Day, a United Nations-approved “reminder to governments to respect press freedom” that most nations ignore.

The 2021 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders reports that “journalism, the main vaccine against disinformation, is completely or partly blocked in 73% of the 180 countries ranked by the organization.”

Thirty-two journalists around the globe were reportedly killed last year. Already this year, in Afghanistan — in an episode enough to make one cry — three young women employees of a local TV station in Jalalabad were gunned down in March by the local Islamic State affiliate. That’s after a 26-year-old woman presenter at the same station named Malalai Maiwand was shot dead in December.

Can you imagine the courage it takes for young women (and men) to continue to work in journalism in Afghanistan, or civil-war-torn Myanmar or Belarus, or in many African nations? Or to keep trying to present real news in the handful of independent online or provincial outlets that still exist in Russia? (The many brave independent Chinese journalists who once functioned in print and online are almost completely silenced.)

Yet, today’s main threat to press freedom in the United States is more insidious than grisly murders. And it undermines the very future of our democratic system.

I refer, of course, to the growth of an alternative media universe, amplified by Donald Trump, that attracts a sizeable portion of the American public into their own news silo — and feeds them a constant and hypnotic “news” diet of outright lies.

This cuts to the heart of how we define press freedom.

This is almost laughable. Mrs Rubin is complaining that some credentialed media sources do not report things the way other credentialed media sources do, and has claimed that some of the reports are, gasp! false! But her own newspaper, the newspaper of record for Philadelphia, the sixth=most populous city in the country, a newspaper which began publication on June 1, 1829, decades before The New York Times or Washington Post, doesn’t even cover the murders in her city, 169 of which had rocked the city so far this year as of the end of Sunday, May 2nd.

Let’s tell the truth here: while Mrs Rubin is complaining that other media sources are pushing false stories, the credentialed media of which she approves are deliberately concealing information from the public. The truth is that the left in today’s media can’t handle the truth, because it would wholly upset their narrative.

Back to the Bee:

”The Bee has taken several recent steps to work against long-standing stereotypes. We have largely banned the use of the word “looting” – a term rooted in racism – and have sought to elevate the voices of emerging writers from communities we have long underserved through our Community Voices project,” said Bee President and Editor Lauren Gustus. “And building trust takes time. Our intention with this policy change is to take another step forward.”

The Bee and most other mainstream media outlets have routinely published police booking photos, commonly referred to as “mugshots,” for decades. The photos are typically provided by law enforcement agencies that arrest or charge suspects.

Their publication can have a permanent damaging effect on individuals and communities.

For example, it’s not always reported when a suspect arrested on suspicion of a crime is later released, acquitted by a jury or pleads guilty to a charge of lesser severity. Yet the mugshot of that person in police custody remains.

It’s certainly true that the mugshot will remain on the internet forever. But it is also true that the Bee and the Herald-Leader routinely publish the names of those arrested, even though those arrested might have the charges dropped, be acquitted in trial or perhaps plead guilty to a ‘lesser’ offense, and it is far easier to search for text, for a name, than it is for a photo. If, for example, Ryan Dontese Jones, is acquitted of the several charges against him, charges reported by the Herald-Leader, when he goes to apply for a job after all is said and done, any company with a responsible human resources department is going to do a Google search for his name, and they’ll find that story, even though the newspaper declined to include Mr Jones’ mugshot.

“Thank you for your application, Mr Jones. We will be in touch with you.”

The truth is that this has nothing to do with the suspects individually. Rather, it has to do with exactly what the Bee said it was: to prevent readers from drawing conclusions based upon the perceived race of suspects identified with mug shots.

The credentialed media are manipulating the news, and the Bee has admitted it. And now you know why I call them journolists.

Posted on by

Political correctness in the Lexington Herald-Leader? (Part 4)

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like posting photographs of accused criminals, even when those suspects are still at large and publishing the photo might help the police capture him. Thus, we were somewhat surprised when the Herald-Leader did post a photo of an accused, but not convicted, criminal suspect. Was this an editorial change?

Apparently not.

Man shot by Lexington police accused of taking hostages inside home, firing shots

By Morgan Eads and Jeremy Chisenhall | May 03, 2021 | 3:11 PM EDT

A man who was shot over the weekend by Lexington police is facing multiple charges related to accusations that he held multiple children and adults in a home as hostages.

Ryan Dontese Jones, 21, is charged with first-degree burglary, four counts of kidnapping a minor, five counts of kidnapping an adult and nine counts of wanton endangerment.

Jones was set to be arraigned Monday, but he had been put in isolation in the Fayette County jail due to COVID-19 precautions and could not attend the remote proceedings. His arraignment was rescheduled for next week. His bond is set at $50,000, according to court records.

Lexington police said they were originally called to the 600 block of Marshall Lane for a report of shots fired at about 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. An officer who arrived was shot at by Jones and returned fire, striking him in the shoulder, police said. The officer was not injured.

Jones is accused of forcing his way into a home on Marshall Lane, and pointing a handgun and shooting at the people inside, according to his arrest citation. He is also accused of restraining multiple adults and children to use them as “hostages,” according to the citation.

Ryan Dontese Jones. Photo by Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center.

This is the mug shot of the accused suspect, but no, it wasn’t in what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal. It was published by Channel 36, WTVQ, and that’s where I found it.

The photo was provided by the Lexington/Fayette County jail; it is free to the media. Why, then, did the Herald-Leader choose not to use it?

In our previous articles on this subject, we noted that the Herald-Leader included illustrations in their articles that were on topic, but simply fluff illustrations, and thus there were no concerns about a photo of the suspect taking up too much bandwidth. To be fair, in this article, the herald-Leader included a photo which was of the crime scene itself, so whatever bandwidth concerns the newspaper might have had, if they have any at all, were used in a photo directly related to the event. Nevertheless, the photo is simply of seven Lexington Police cruisers, on the street, with crime scene tape. It is a too-common image which does not actually inform the reader of much at all, though we can tell that the neighborhood is one of what appears to be a decent-looking subdivision of brick single-family homes, in what seems like a ‘starter home‘ neighborhood.

So, why is the Herald-Leader so seemingly unwilling to publish mug shots of accused criminal suspects? If it is because the suspects have been accused, but not convicted, why did the paper include the photo of Ronnie Helton? If it is to protect those who have been accused but not convicted, why print the names of the suspects? Those, after all, are far more likely to be found in a Google search, and, if Mr Jones is acquitted of these charges, and then goes out job hunting, any responsible human resources department is going to do a due diligence Google search, and find that he was accused of a pretty serious crime.

What, then, is the point?

Posted on by

Political correctness in the Lexington Herald-Leader? (Part3) I wonder if journalists have been replaced by journolists?

We noted, in two different stories, that while all of the other Lexington media sources published the picture of Juanyah Clay, who was being sought in the murder of 26-year-old Bryan D. Greene, whose body police found at the Eastridge Apartments on Alumni Drive on January 30th. The first linked story concerned the police looking for Mr Clay, so the publication of his photo could only have helped the police find him.

We also noted that in both of the earlier stories in the Lexington Herald-Leader included stock photos of the police stringing crime scene tape around an unspecified area, so the failure to use Mr Clay’s photo, which was freely available at the Lexington city government’s page as well as the Police Department’s Facebook page. Thus, it was not a matter of the newspaper having to pay someone for the photo.

And today, we have this:

Detectives detail multiple cases against Lexington man charged in Alumni Drive murder

By Morgan Eads | April 15, 2021 | 12:31 PM

At a court hearing Thursday morning, two detectives and a jail employee discussed the various charges against a man accused of shooting and killing a 26-year-old after he was already wanted for cutting off an ankle monitor while on conditional release in a different criminal case.

Juanyah J. Clay, 19, was arrested in March and charged with murder in the death of 26-year-old Bryan Greene, according to police.

Greene’s body was found on the night of Jan. 30 after someone spotted a large amount of blood outside an apartment at 2800 Alumni Drive, Lexington police detective Jeremy Atkins testified at the preliminary hearing Thursday. When police went inside the apartment they found Greene dead of what appeared to be multiple gunshot wounds.

Further down we find:

Clay was arrested on March 30 at a hotel on E. Lowery Lane, Lexington police detective Keith McKinney testified. He was found to have $1,020 in small bills, three concealed loaded firearms and unknown pills on his person, and a digital scale and marijuana was found in the room he was exiting, McKinney said. In addition to the charge of murder, Clay is facing two charges of drug trafficking and one charge of concealing a deadly weapon.

After his arrest, Clay admitted to Atkins that he shot Greene, Atkins testified. Clay also stated that another person was present at the time of Greene’s death, and that that person has since died. While Atkins did not testify to how that person died, he said that the person’s name was Markel Allen, which is the name of a 17-year-old who was shot and killed in Lexington on Feb. 17. That case is still under investigation.

At the time of Greene’s death, Clay had an arrest warrant out for violating the conditions of his release as he awaited trial on a separate burglary charge, according to court records. An employee of the Fayette County Detention Center testified Thursday that Clay was placed on an ankle monitor in May of 2020. He’s accused of cutting that ankle monitor off in June 2020 and throwing it out the window of a vehicle in Lexington, the jail employee testified.

Sounds like a bad dude! He was in possession of illegal drugs and the paraphernalia for selling it, and three concealed, loaded weapons, all while he was on the lam for a burglary trial.

But here’s the part that gets me. The Herald-Leader included this video in today’s story:

Underneath was the caption:

Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers urged people with information regarding homicide investigations to speak with police. He said some witnesses don’t cooperate with police investigations, making it more difficult to identify suspects. By Jeremy Chisenhall

Jeremy Chisenhall was the writer of the first two stories, the ones referenced in my previous articles.

Now, if the Herald-Leader is going to post the video of Police Chief Lawrence Weathers urging people to come forward, why wouldn’t the paper publish the suspect’s photo, particularly when the suspect was at large, and information from the public could have proven helpful in finding him?

I do not know the newspaper’s policy on this, and when I tried to contact both Morgan Eads, who wrote today’s story, and Mr Chisenhall, who wrote the previous two, neither was available by telephone.

So, I will go back to my previous speculation of March 30th: if 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. Journolism over journalism, perhaps?

Posted on by

The out-of-touch Lexington Herald-Leader doesn’t like it when the riff-raff express their opinions

It is with some amusement that I noted that the Editorial Board of what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal, in their complaints that Republicans in the Bluegrass State need to grow up:

Impeach Beshear? Seriously? In Frankfort and DC, Republicans need to act like grownups.

By Herald-Leader Editorial Board | January 22, 2021 | January 11, 2021 | 11:01 AM EST | Updated 11:11 AM EST

In the same week the U.S. Capitol was overrun by the domestic terrorists who make up Donald Trump’s base, Kentucky’s state legislature got to work. The “superdupermajority” of Republicans put all their energy and brain-power into making sure Gov. Andy Beshear was hampered in efforts to save us all from coronavirus, and then to put a cherry on it, announced they will set up a committee to impeach him.

So on one side of Frankfort is an earnest, serious politician, one who hasn’t gotten everything right but has tried hard to battle a pandemic the likes of which we haven’t seen since 1918. On the other side, we have some distinctly unserious people who are working hard on curbing said serious politicians, and, say, on how to hamstring the last two abortion clinics in the state while thousands of people get sick of COVID-19 and die.

If you want to know just how not serious these people are, they had to quickly amend their bill curbing the governor’s powers to close schools and businesses after Beshear himself reminded them that sometimes his rules were less stringent than the CDC.

Then to top off this tragicomedy of errors, House officials announced a panel to take up articles of impeachment against Beshear as a bunch of armed thugs circled the state Capitol. This is the same kind of militia movement that earlier this year hung an effigy of Beshear outside the governor’s mansion.

This must stop.

Senators Dennis Parrett, D-Elizabethtown, from left, Jared Carpenter, R-Berea, and Brandon Smith, R-Hazard, right, walk past demonstrators a protest at the State Capitol in Frankfort, Ky., Saturday, Jan. 9, 2021. Alex Slitz ASLITZ@HERALD-LEADER.COM

Armed thugs, huh? According to the dictionary, a thug is defined as “a violent person, especially a criminal.” Yet the article the Editorial Board linked bears no mention of any shots being fired. An accompanying photograph shows three state senators, one of whom was a Democrat, walking past the “armed thugs” without an apparent care in the world.

“The same kind of militia movement that earlier this year hung an effigy of Beshear outside the governor’s mansion”? Hanging the hated in effigy has a long history in America, as noted in The Hill:

Americans have a long history of citizens committing violence against president effigies to voice political dissent.

James Madison, John Tyler, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter were all burned in effigy during their presidencies. And each time this happened, the offending party leaders repudiated the distasteful and disrespectful actions of their constituents.

President Obama was hanged in effigy, and Kathy Griffin posted a picture of her holding President Trump’s severed head.

The Editorial Board again:

But Republicans in Frankfort and Washington, D.C., who have played pattycake with these kinds of extremists for years, have got to stop this wing of the party from hijacking them literally, it seems, and on policy. They have got to become grown-ups and stop with these silly games that end in not so silly ways.

Did the hanging of Governor Beshear in effigy last spring end in violence? It seems that no one was harmed, other, perhaps, than the feelings of his supporters. Did the armed demonstration on January 9th result in injuries, damage or death? If it did, the Herald-Leader had nothing about that.

The Editorial Board appear to be like Twitter and The New York Times and others: they don’t like freedom of speech when it isn’t speech with which they agree.

In the article on the impeachment request, Herald-Leader reporter Daniel Desrochers noted that the petition was by four citizens, and that while there has been some talk about it in the legislature, “no sitting lawmaker has formally called for Beshear’s impeachment.” It would seem, then, that the Editorial Board is railing not against members of the General Assembly, but against a few citizens.

Of the four citizens who filed the petition, two aren’t even Republicans. Mr Desrochers noted that one of them, Jacob Clark, a 38-year-old machinist from Grayson County, is a Libertarian. Andrew Cooperrider of Lexington is also a Libertarian.

I would point out here the Editorial Board’s recent political endorsements:

  • 2020: Joe Biden for President, Amy McGrath for Senate, and Josh Hicks for 6th District Representative;
  • 2018: Amy McGrath for 6th District Representative
  • 2016: Hillary Clinton for President, Jim Gray for Senate, and Nancy Jo Kemper for 6th District Representative
  • 2014: Alison Lundergan Grimes for Senate, and Elisabeth Jensen for 6th District Representative

All Democrats, and all defeated in Kentucky and in the 6th District. It seems that the Herald-Leader Editorial Board isn’t exactly in tune with the voters of the Commonwealth.

Sadly, the editorial board did get their way in 2019, and Andy Beshear was elected. All he did was unconstitutionally suspend our First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and peaceable assembly, claiming that COVID-19 somehow trumped the Constitution of the United States, the same Constitution they are so vociferously defending when it comes to the election of Joe Biden. It’s almost as though there was some hypocrisy there!