Tag Archives: #Journolism

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44 murdered in Philly in January . . . which is actually an improvement!

Well, January is over, and the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page has the numbers: as of 11:59 PM EST on January 31st, 44 people had lost their life’s blood in the city’s mean streets. That’s a pretty horrible number, but it’s better than last year’s total of 50 in January.

44 homicides ÷ 31 days = 1.4194 per day, x 365 days in the year = 518.0645 projected killings, if that rate is maintained throughout the year. That would be well short of the record of 562, set in 2021, but above 2020’s 499, and the old record of 500 set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990.

It’s still too early in the year to really draw any conclusions from the numbers: the 50 in 2021 worked out to a projected homicide total of 588.7097, which was well above the final numbers, while the 38 killings in January of 2020 worked out to a projected 448.6452 for the year, which was well under the carnage for the year.

But it’s still the same old, same old at The Philadelphia Inquirer: neither the newspaper’s website main page, nor its specific crime page, indicates a single story, even a brief few paragraphs, on any of the five homicides committed since Thursday, January 27th,[1]The Current Crime Statistics page is only updated during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, so we do not get reports on the end of the day on Friday and Saturday. which leads me to conclude one thing: all of the victims were young black males, because the “anti-racist news organization” into which publisher Elizabeth Hughes has turned the nation’s third-oldest continuously published daily newspaper, to report the unedited truth would, in itself, be racist.

What has anti racism really become? At least in Philadelphia, it has become the acceptance of an urban black culture in which the killing of young black men by other young black men is just plain expected, and the Inquirer goes right along with that.

References

References
↑1 The Current Crime Statistics page is only updated during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, so we do not get reports on the end of the day on Friday and Saturday.
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More journolism from the Lexington Herald-Leader Are the editors taking their decisions based upon race?

No, that’s not a typo in the article headline; journolism has a real meaning. 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.

We noted, on January 27th, that what my best friend used to refer to as the Lexington Herald-Liberal was perfectly fine with ignoring the McClatchy Mugshot Policy when it came to white people accused of crimes, but seemed to decline to do so for black defendants. And here they go again:

    State trooper injured in shooting released from hospital; Lexington man charged

    by Karla Ward | Saturday, January 29, 2022 | 1:23 PM EST | Updated: 4:11 PM EST

    LeeQuan Taylor, photo by Kentucky Department of Corrections, via WCHS-TV.

    A 22-year-old Lexington man is charged with attempted murder of a police officer in connection with a shooting that injured a Kentucky State Police trooper in Harrison County Friday afternoon.

    Kentucky State Police said in a tweet Saturday afternoon that the trooper, whose name has not been released, was recuperating at home after being released from University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital.

    Aside from the attempted murder charge, LeeQuan T. Taylor is charged with first-degree assault and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon. He was taken to the Bourbon County Regional Detention Center after his arrest Friday night.

There’s more at this link.

LeeQuan Taylor, photo by Bourbon County Detention Center, via Fox56. Click to enlarge.

The Bourbon County Detention Center released a more recent mugshot of the accused.

The Bourbon County photo was included in the Fox56 story, originally posted at 12:58 PM, and updated at 2:57 PM, well before the Herald-Leader story was updated, so it was available to Karla Ward, the reporter. The newspaper’s story about the arrest of Burl Hollen is still available, and despite the paper being notified, both by comment on the story and via Twitter of their use of the mugshot of a white defendant, the photo is still on the story. The story on Mr Hollen does not indicate that he has a past criminal record.

Yet Saturday’s story on the capture of Mr Taylor noted that he is a previously convicted felon, which means, at least according to the Herald-Leader’s reporting, worse than Mr Hollen; Mr Hollen is innocent until proven guilty, while Mr Taylor, though innocent until proven guilty in the shooting of the state trooper, is guilty of felonies in the past. One would think that, if the editors of the newspaper were going to make an exception to the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, it would have been for Mr Taylor, not Mr Hollen. But, as I have noted in the past, Mr Taylor is black, while Mr Hollen is white.

Is that really the difference?

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The Lexington Herald-Leader and journalistic ethics

In The First Street Journal, I frequently refer to journolism. 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.

The McClatchy Mugshot Policy states:

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.

So, if a rape suspect was arrested in Madison County, someone who cannot be an urgent threat to the community, since he’s now in custody, someone who isn’t a public official or suspect in a hate crime, a serial killer or suspect in a high-profile crime, One would assume that the Lexington Herald-Leader wouldn’t publish his picture, right?

    Screenshot from Lexington Herald-Leader

    Kentucky State Police assists Madison County Sheriff’s Office with arrest of rape suspect

    by Christopher Leach | Thursday, January 27, 2022 | 7:23 AM EST

    Troopers with Kentucky State Police in Estill County arrested a suspect accused of sexual assaulting a minor on Tuesday, according to the Madison County Sheriff’s Office.

    Burl Hollon, of Waco, was charged with two counts of rape, two counts of sodomy and two counts of sexual abuse. He is being lodged at the Madison County Detention Center.

    No other details have been released about Hollon’s case. The sheriff’s office conducted the investigation while KSP made the arrest.

The mugshot there? That’s a screenshot taken from the Herald-Leader original, and it’s most certainly a police mugshot, taken from the Madison County Sheriff’s Facebook page.

Now, I have no sympathy for the accused, but not yet convicted, Mr Hollen. The Facebook page states that he has been accused of:

  • Rape, 1st Degree – Victim <12 years of age
  • Rape, 2nd Degree – No Force
  • Sodomy, 1st Degree – Victim <12 years of age
  • Sodomy, 2nd Degree
  • Sexual Abuse, 1st Degree – Victim U/12 years
  • Sexual Abuse, 3rd Degree

Just the first charge:

    KRS § 510.040. Rape in the first degree.
    (1) A person is guilty of rape in the first degree when:
    (a) He engages in sexual intercourse with another person by forcible compulsion; or
    (b) He engages in sexual intercourse with another person who is incapable of consent because he:
    1. Is physically helpless; or
    2. Is less than twelve (12) years old.
    (2) Rape in the first degree is a Class B felony unless the victim is under twelve (12) years old or receives a serious physical injury in which case it is a Class A felony.

Class A felonies in the Bluegrass State can result in prison sentences of 20 to 50 years, or life imprisonment.

If convicted, Mr Hollen should receive the maximum sentence allowable under the law; the only way he should ever leave prison is in a hearse.

But I noticed, as I have before, that the Herald-Leader, which very much eschews publishing the mugshots of photos of black persons accused of, or even convicted of, serious crimes, certainly seems less reticent when it comes to publishing the photos of white suspects.

According to the Lexington Police Department’s shootings investigations page, there have been nine non-fatal shootings in the city . . . and eight of the victims have been black. In 2021, with 134 shootings reported, there were 20 victims who are white, and 12 more listed as Hispanic, which leaves 102 victims listed as black. That’s 76.12%, in a city in which just 14.2% of the population are black. The lead McClatchy newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, stated that publishing mugshots and crime videos, “disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.”

So what are the editors of the Herald-Leader doing? Whether intentionally or otherwise, the paper’s coverage of crime and their choices in which photos to use appear to be aimed at persuading readers that the perpetrators of crimes in the region are primarily white. While in the eastern Kentucky areas of the Herald-Leader’s circulation area, that’s probably true, given that the non-white percentage of the population in that area is very low, but when you get to the city of Lexington, the numbers say that no, that’s not the case.

To not “perpetuat(e) stereotypes”, the newspaper would print no mugshots at all; printing a disproportionate percentage of mugshots in which the accused are white is an active attempt to not just avoid stereotypes, but to skew the public’s perception in an inaccurate direction.

Part of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states:

    Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

  • Never deliberately distort facts or context, including visual information. Clearly label illustrations and re-enactments.

What the editors of the Herald-Leader are doing is distorting the facts, using visual information.

This is journolism, not journalism, this is the skewing of information to produce a false impression. If the editors are aware of what is being done in the newspaper and website they control, they are deliberately lying to their readers; if the editors are somehow not aware of what they have been doing, then they are not competent in doing their jobs, and need to be replaced.

It’s easy enough to just tell the truth. If the editors are concerned that publishing mugshots “disproportionately harms people of color,” then they should stop publishing all mugshots. In that manner, while they would not be telling the whole truth, they would not be distorting the truth. But what they have been doing recently is a distortion of the truth, and rotten journalism.

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The Karening of the left

The media were all atwitter — pun very much intended — about a story by National Public Radio’s Nina Reines[1]The wife of Dr H David Reines goes by Nina Totenberg, but simply because she has not shown respect to her husband by taking his last name does not mean that The First Street Journal will show similar … Continue reading which claimed that Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch was refusing to wear a facemask around Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is a Type I diabetic, and thus at greater risk of serious symptoms if she contracts COVID-19, and that Chief Justice John Roberts had asked Mr Gorsuch to mask up.

The Justices themselves refuted the story, first with a joint message from Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch, and then from the Chief Justice. The much nicer Dana has more on this in Patterico’s Pontifications.

Despite the fact that the lovely Mrs Reines’ report has been discredited, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Helen Dunne[2]The wife of Michael Dunne goes by Helen Ubiñas, but simply because she has not shown respect to her husband by taking his last name does not mean that The First Street Journal will show similar … Continue reading has run with it anyway.

    After NPR’s longtime Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg highlighted his behavior in a story this week, there was a lot of righteous outrage directed at Gorsuch.

    On social media, people called him all kinds of names: selfish, childish, petty. No argument here, and I suspect the pointed backlash spoke more to the sheer exhaustion from people tired of vaccine opponents and anti-maskers as the pandemic stretches into a third year.

So, it’s that the left are tired of people who don’t fall into line with their views. Got it!

Mrs Dunne continued to tell us about the denials of Mrs Reines’ story by Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch, and the Chief Justice, which is confirmation that she knew about those denials when she wrote her story, and then proceeded to tell her readers that she just didn’t believe them, saying “the statements read like textbook damage control”.

    Plus, “warm colleagues and friends” don’t need to be asked, by anyone, to do what needs to be done to protect one another. And they sure don’t need clarifying statements.

If someone has lied about them, they most certainly do.

    In an opinion piece for CNN, Kara Alaimo wrote that Gorsuch’s behavior was a shocking display of male entitlement.

    Agreed, and let’s take that a step further: It’s white male entitlement, because as it happens, Sotomayor, a fellow Puerto Rican, is the only woman of color on the bench. And, whew, the optics!

What a bunch of bovine feces! Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch are equals on the Court.[3]Justice Sotomayor, appointed by President Barack Obama, is senior to Justice Gorsuch, appointed by President Trump, but that seniority does not confer any difference in rank. The Chief Justice … Continue reading

    But while all eyes and ire seemed to land on Gorsuch, mine lingered longer on the other justices, because from the hallowed grounds of the White House to the more common spaces of our everyday workplaces, bad behavior can’t exist without enablers, not easily anyway. Even when — perhaps especially when — the enabling comes in the form of silence or inaction.

At which point, Mrs Dunne then includes the obligatory slam on President Trump.

    That problematic colleague at your office couldn’t continue to be a problem if the enablers didn’t dismiss or downplay their behavior.

    And as such, Gorsuch wouldn’t be able to act so coldheartedly without the implied or explicit consent of his fellow justices, including Sotomayor apparently, who — if that statement is any indication — gave him a pass to keep the peace. (But then the burdened are often expected to set aside their own comfort and safety.)

Yes, the ‘burdened’ are expected to take care of themselves! Mrs Dunne, and the left in general to a large extent, seem to believe that such ‘burdens’ can be shifted onto other people. Using her logic, even if COVID-19 somehow disappeared, every American ought to wear a face mask, all the time, during flu season, because who can know which passerby or office colleague is immunocompromised? Every adult ought to have to wear a facemask around children during RSV season, in the RSV can be a hospitalization-serious event.

Heck, why wait until flu and RSV seasons; viral and bacterial infections can occur at any time during the year, so, according to Mrs Dunne’s reasoning, we ought to all wear masks, all the time, because someone more susceptible to whatever might come along.

    But then, from supermarkets to the Supreme Court, we now live in a world where we continue to make adjustments and accommodations for people who have no regard for the greater good, who have to be asked and begged and cajoled to do the right thing because we value the appearance of harmony over the intentional practice of collective humanity.

What is the “greater good” of which the author writes? To me, individual rights and the preservation of such are the greater good, while Mrs Dunne seems to be rather opposed to anyone who has ideas of which she disapproves. She didn’t like it when Kyle Rittenhouse was not sent to jail for refusing to let armed thugs chase him down and beat him to death.

According to Mrs Dunne, it’s not just the guy who refuses to wear a diaper on his face who’s boorish, but everyone else who fails to wag their fingers and scold him is complicit, is enabling, as well. That some of us might support his right, and our rights, to not wear a mask in public seems not to have occurred to her. Mrs Dunne’s first name really ought to be Karen.

References

References
↑1 The wife of Dr H David Reines goes by Nina Totenberg, but simply because she has not shown respect to her husband by taking his last name does not mean that The First Street Journal will show similar disrespect to him.
↑2 The wife of Michael Dunne goes by Helen Ubiñas, but simply because she has not shown respect to her husband by taking his last name does not mean that The First Street Journal will show similar disrespect to him.
↑3 Justice Sotomayor, appointed by President Barack Obama, is senior to Justice Gorsuch, appointed by President Trump, but that seniority does not confer any difference in rank. The Chief Justice outranks the Associate Justices, which gives him some executive authority over the Court and its functions, but he is not the supervisor of the other Justices.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer can’t handle the truth!

Might as well queue up Jack Nicholson and “You can’t handle the truth!” from A Few Good Men.

Screen capture of comments section, Sunday, January 10, 2022, at 7:32 PM EST. Click to enlarge.

On Sunday, we noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a sports section piece on the University of Pennsylvania’s male-to-female transgender swimmer Will Thomas, who goes by the name “Lia” these days. The first paragraph of our article stated:

    I was surprised to see that The Philadelphia Inquirer allowed reader comments on this article. Since it is, supposedly, a sports article, and the Inquirer didn’t close sports articles to comments when they did so on everything else, maybe an editor hasn’t figured it out yet. As I start this article, at 9:10 AM, there are ten comments up, including two of mine; I wonder how long that will last.

The answer was: they didn’t last long!

I ran across a photo if the masthead of The Philadelphia Inquirer from February 25, 1953, and noticed the ‘taglines’ that it used: “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. By Public ledger, the Inquirer was setting itself up as Philadelphia’s newspaper of record, which Wikipedia defines as “a major newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative.” That Wikipedia article named four newspapers of record for the United States: The New York Times (Founded 1851), The Washington Post (1877), The Los Angeles Times (1881) and The Wall Street Journal (1889). First printed on Monday, Jun1 1, 1829, the then Pennsylvania Inquirer is older than any of them, and is the third oldest continuously published newspaper in America, behind only the Hartford Courant (1764) and the New York Post (1801). “An editorial in the first issue of The Pennsylvania Inquirer promised that the paper would be devoted to the right of a minority to voice their opinion and ‘the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the people, equally against the abuses as the usurpation of power.’”

Boy has that changed! As has happened to other great newspapers, the newsroom of the Inquirer was captured by the young #woke, who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too.

“Devoted to the right of a minority to voice their opinion”? Yeah, that failed, too, as the Inquirer closed comments on the majority of its articles, stating that:

    Commenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring.

Screen capture of comments at 5:35 AM EST on January 10, 2022. Click to enlarge.

Really? How do they know? How can they be sure that these views do not represent more than a “tiny fraction” of their audience? Have they really done the research, or was it just that the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading didn’t like the idea that the riff-raff could express their opinions? Empirically, the research had been done for them: ten comments — at least on Sunday morning — and not one of them supported the idea that Mr Thomas was actually a woman, or that him competing against biological women athletically was in any way fair. Are we to presume that only a “tiny fraction” of Inquirer readers oppose the idea that ‘trans women’ should compete athletically against ‘cis women’, yet only that ‘tiny fraction’ bothered to comment?

As of 5:35 AM — yes, I’m up early because I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep — there are five new comments, none of which support the idea that ‘trans women’ should compete equally against biological women, and it’s my guess that all of them will disappear as soon as the editors begin day shift and get to work. Of course, I screen captured them, because it wouldn’t be long before the Inquirer tried to hide the evidence.

The newspaper’s reasoning for eliminating comments on most articles was:

    Commenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring.

    It’s not just Inquirer staff who are disaffected by the comments on many stories. We routinely hear from members of our community that the comments are alienating and detract from the journalism we publish.

    Only about 2 percent of Inquirer.com visitors read comments, and an even smaller percentage post them. Most of our readers will not miss the comments.

If such a small percentage read the comments, how is it that they “routinely hear from members of our community that the comments are alienating”?

The truth that the #woke of the Inquirer can’t handle is that most people, people with some actual common sense, do not agree with the notion that someone like Mr Thomas, who was born male, who grew up male, who went through puberty as a male, and who competed, successfully, though not overwhelmingly so, as a male, can just decide that he’s a woman, take testosterone suppressants for a year, and is now indistinguishable from a biological female? For the journolists[2]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 the Inquirer, the notion that girls can be boys and boys can be girls is ‘settled science,’ and must not be questioned.

This photo, from the Inquirer article, tells you all you need to know, but, who are you going to believe: the #woke, or your lying eyes?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 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.
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Dear Helen Ubiñas: if you want to see the reason why, look to your own newspaper

I have previously noted Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas, several times, based primarily on column from December of 2020, “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.” She wrote:

    The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

    By the end of 2020, that number more than doubled: 447 people gunned down.

    Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

    At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

      “A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

    That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

That was thirteen months ago. What brings it to my attention again? Her column on Friday, and its subtitle:

    For two mothers touched by gun violence: ‘Pray, pray, and pray some more.’

    Numbers tend to attract attention around here; the people behind them, not always so much.

    by Helen Ubiñas | Friday, January 7, 2022

    At 12:55 p.m., on the eve of the new year, a 17-year-old died from a gunshot wound he suffered a day earlier.

    He was the 562nd person to be killed in Philadelphia in 2021.

    And, as it would turn out, the last homicide victim of the year.

    His name was Nasheem Choice, and three days later, on Jan. 3, he would have celebrated his 18th birthday.

There’s much more at the original, a good column which you should read.

But it’s that subtitle, noting that “around here” it’s the numbers which get attention, not the individuals who were killed. What do I see in the Inquirer, a newspaper which publisher Elizabeth Hughes vowed to make “an antiracist news organization”? I see that the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s five separate stories, a whole lot more than the two or three paragraphs most victims get.

Then there was the murder of Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation. Mr Collington was a white victim, allegedly murdered by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. The Inquirer then published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. Five separate stories about the case of a murdered white guy.

The Inquirer even broke precedent when it came to Mr Collington’s murder by including the name of the juvenile suspect in the case, and delving into his previous record.

Compared to the coverage the Inquirer gives concerning black victims, that’s some real white privilege there!

Oh, it’s not as though the Inquirer doesn’t publish stories about black victims, at least when it comes to black victims who are ‘innocents’. The murder of Samir Jefferson merited two stories, and four stories about the killing of 13-year-old Marcus Stokes.[1]I did note my suspicion that young Mr Stokes might not have been quite the innocent the Inquirer, and writer Anna Orso, made him out to be. A story is merited if the victim was a local high school basketball star, and cute little white girls killed get tremendous coverage: a search of the newspaper’s website for Rian Thal returned 4855 results! But for the vast majority of black victims, Inquirer coverage is a couple paragraphs, mostly in the late evening, and which have disappeared from the main page of the newspaper’s website by morning.

Did the newspaper’s editors think that no one would notice this? Or is it that the editors have so internalized their own biases that they didn’t realize it themselves?

I’ve said it dozens of times: black lives don’t matter to the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer, regardless of what they say, because their actions, their editorial decisions, speak far more loudly, and clearly, than their words.

Can Miss Ubiñas change that? Can she bring it to the editors’ attention? I have tried, but I’m just a nobody, and the editors seem to need a Somebody to point out what the readership can clearly see.

References

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Has the Lexington Herald-Leader abandoned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy?

We have noted, dozens of times, how the Lexington Herald-Leader, in going along with the McClatchy mugshot policy, has declined to print mugshots of accused defendants, even when those defendants are already convicted felons, and even when the subjects are accused of murder and are still on the loose.

But now, the Herald-Leader is doing the community a service, with an accused murderer on the loose. Can you spot the difference?

Kenneth Strange, photo via Nicholasville Police Department. Click to enlarge.

Police: Central KY murder suspect on the run, ‘considered armed and dangerous’

by Jeremy Chisenhall | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 | 4:48 PM EST | Updated: Thursday, January 6, 2022 | 7:58 AM EST

Nicholasville police were looking for a local man who they believe killed a woman, the police department announced Wednesday.

Kenneth Strange, 54, was wanted for the alleged murder of a woman who was found shot dead at Strange’s residence on Lauren Drive in Nicholasville in the early-morning hours Wednesday, police said. Police have obtained warrants for Strange’s arrest, they said.

“Strange is currently on the run and should be considered armed and dangerous,” Nicholasville police said in a Facebook post. “We are currently working with several jurisdictions across the commonwealth in an attempt to locate him. If anyone knows where Strange might be please contact your local law enforcement agency.”

There’s more here.

Can you think of anything, anything at all, which makes publishing Mr Strange’s photo different from say, that of Jo’Quon Anthony Edwards Jackson, or Juanyah J Clay?

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The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us what’s important to them

I suppose that I shouldn’t really be surprised.

Not everybody reads the newspaper, or, in my case, the digital newspaper, in the morning of New Year’s Day, and, when it comes to The Philadelphia Inquirer, some of the stories the editors think less important disappear quickly. Oh, they don’t disappear forever, but unless you know where to look, you won’t find them on the main page of the Inquirer’s website.

But the tweet reproduced at the right[1]This is a screenshot, but if you click on the image, it will take you to the Inquirer’s original. sure seems to characterize the newspaper well. An actual gun battle in the city’s streets, something I would see as a rather important story, disappeared from the main page, though there were two stories on it buried deeply.

Instead, in the main page’s “Latest” column, screen captured at 8:44 AM EST today, and reproduced below — you can click on the image to enlarge it — those stories were gone, gone, gone, while the advertising article noted in the tweet was prominently featured. I’ve said it before: black lives don’t matter to the editors of the Inquirer, but it seems that advertorial money certainly does.

A site search for Club Risqué failed to turn up anything in the Inquirer over the Philadelphia Police spotting two suspects in the murder in front of Club Risqué, even though the local television station, Fox 29, covered it, as did, as did Robert Stacy McCain, a blogger with roughly zero connection to Philadelphia or Pennsylvania.

There are, however, five separate stories referencing the January 6th Capitol kerfuffle.

It’s so obvious that even the most dyed-in-the-wool liberal ought to be able to see it: the almost entirely white Capitol kerfufflers have already been mostly arrested and charged, and the Justice Department continues to try to identify others, while the two suspects in the Club Risqué murders, suspects who are still on the loose, probably still on the loose in Philadelphia, and whom the police could use help in locating and apprehending, are black.

Nope, much better to have an advertorial on buying glasses on the main page, and that’s because black lives don’t matter to the editors and publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer!

References

References
↑1 This is a screenshot, but if you click on the image, it will take you to the Inquirer’s original.
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For The New York Times, some news is just not fit to print!

From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

    On August 18, 1896, (Adolph Simon) Ochs acquired control of the financially faltering New York Times, again with borrowed money ($75,000). To set his paper apart from its more sensational competitors, Ochs adopted the slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print” (first used October 25, 1896) and insisted on reportage that lived up to that promise. Despite an early shortage of capital, he refused advertisements that he considered dishonest or in poor taste. In 1898, when sales were low and expenses unusually high, he probably saved The New York Times by cutting its price from three cents to one cent. He thereby attracted many readers who previously had bought the more sensational penny papers, especially the New York World and the Journal. By 1900 Ochs was able to purchase a controlling interest in The New York Times.

In its long and august history, the Times, through many editors and publishers, was our newspaper of record, printing many things that the government opposed, and winning its right to publish the so-called Pentagon Papers, despite the attempt by the Nixon Administration to prohibit such.

But now? The Times reported on the stabbing murder of Columbia University graduate student Davide Giri, but left out a lot of detail.

    Columbia University Student Dies in Stabbing Near Campus

    The graduate student, Davide Giri, was fatally stabbed near the Manhattan campus on Thursday night. A man has been arrested and charged with murder, the police said.

    By Troy Closson and Lola Fadulu | Friday, December 3, 2021

    A graduate student at Columbia University died and another man was wounded after the two were stabbed in Upper Manhattan on Thursday night, the police and college officials said.

    The student, Davide Giri, was traveling home from soccer practice just before 11 p.m. when he was stabbed in the abdomen about two blocks from his apartment building, the police and friends said. He was taken to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

    The police arrested Vincent Pinkney, 25, of Manhattan, in the attacks and charged him on Friday with murder, attempted murder, assault, attempted assault and three counts of criminal possession of a weapon. He had been found in Central Park, and the police said that he had been menacing a third man with a knife.

    In a campuswide letter sent on Friday morning, Lee C. Bollinger, the university’s president, identified Mr. Giri, 30, as a student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and expressed sadness over his death.

There’s more at the original, telling us about the victim, and noting that a similar killing had occurred just a few blocks away, when Tessa Majors, a student at Bernard College, was killed during a robbery.

What you won’t find in the original are any details about the (alleged) assailant, Vincent Pinkney. For those, you have to go across the pond, to London’s Daily Mail:

    Gang member, 25, charged in fatal Manhattan stabbing spree that killed Columbia student and wounded Italian tourist has been arrested 11 times since 2012 and was on parole for gang attack

    • Alleged killer Vincent Pinkney, 25, has a lengthy rap sheet and 11 arrests on robbery, assault and other charges
    • He is accused of stabbing a Columbia grad student to death and wounding tourist in mad crime spree
    • Davide Giri, 30, a PhD candidate in computer science at Columbia University, was stabbed to death
    • Italian tourist, Robert Malastina, 27, was wounded in Central Park just 15 minutes after the murder
    • Pinkney was arrested after threatening another man, 29, who was walking in the park with his girlfriend
    • Police said Pinkney, who was out on parole, had 11 prior arrests dating back to 2012
    • The fatal stabbing took place just a block from where Bernard College student Tessa Majors was killed in 2019
    • NYC murders have shot up by 42 per cent since 2019, and overall crime this year is up by more than 3 per cent

    By Keith Griffith and Ronny Reyes | Published: 1:00 EST, 4 December 2021 | Updated: 01:29 EST, 4 December 2021

    The suspect accused of killing a Columbia University grad student and stabbing an Italian tourist in a demented Manhattan crime spree is a career criminal who was out on parole for a gang attack, it has been revealed.

    Vincent Pinkney, 25, was escorted into NPYD Central Booking on Friday night, as hundreds gathered on the South Lawn of Columbia in a vigil for Davide Giri, a PhD candidate in computer science.

    Giri, 30, died around 11pm on Thursday after police say he was stabbed in the stomach by Pinkney, who allegedly went on to wound an Italian tourist, Robert Malastina, 27, outside Central Park before ‘menacing’ another man, 29, with a large kitchen knife as the victim strolled the park with his girlfriend.

    Pinkney is a member of Bloods gang off-shoot, Everybody Killas, who has at least 11 prior arrests dating back to 2012 and was out on parole for a 2015 gang assault, police said.

    He was released from prison in June 2018 after serving a four-year sentence for a brutal attack in which he and three accomplices slashed, punched and kicked a victim in an assault that was caught on camera, according to the New York Post.

    On Friday night, Pinkney was transferred from the 26 Precinct to Central Booking, wearing a white Tyvek jumpsuit.

    The five-foot-five, 140-pound suspect was escorted in handcuffs by two burly NYPD detectives.

    Meanwhile, shocked Columbia students gathered on the school’s central quad for a candlelight vigil honoring Giri a sixth-year doctoral student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

That video of Mr Pinkney’s arrest tells you all that you need to know about why The New York Times found the details about the (alleged) killer not to be news which is fit to print. For 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 in the Times’ newsroom, the ones who forced out liberal columnist Bari Weiss because she just wasn’t #woke enough, the fact that a young, black gang member (allegedly) stabbed to death a white PhD candidate in computer science at an Ivy League college just does not fit Teh Narrative. The leftists who decry ‘mass incarceration’ just can’t deal with the fact that Mr Pinkney should not have been able to stab Mr Giri, because he should have still been behind bars on Thursday night.

I’ve said it before: the problem isn’t mass incarceration, but that not enough people have been incarcerated, for not enough time.

As far as Mr Pinkney is concerned, a 5’5″, 140 lb pipsqueak punk, who (allegedly) proved what a big man he is, he’s looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in prison. If he had been treated more strictly by the state of New York for his past offenses, if he had been given longer sentences for past crimes and still been behind bars last Thursday night, he would still be looking forward to getting out of prison at some point in the future. Yeah, he was stupid Thursday night, almost surely is congenitally stupid, and it would not surprise me if we found out that he was drunk or stoned, but I come around to the fact that those who treated him so leniently in the past — remember: he has eleven previous arrests on his rap sheet — did him no favors.

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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.