For some reason I have been unable to find the text version of McClatchy’s new mugshot policy online, but I was able to find this photo of it. The Kansas City Star, a McClatchy newspaper did mention it, as have several tweets, so I’m going to consider the image I found of it to be accurate.
This leads me to a couple of questions. Why did the Lexington Herald-Leader decline to publish the mugshot of Juanyah J Clay in its story on Mr Clay being sought on a murder charge and still being on the loose? Surely a man already out on bond, and then accused of murder, would fit the definition of being “an urgent threat to the community”. Publishing Mr Clay’s mugshot might have helped the Lexington Police Department locate and arrest Mr Clay, of a reader spotted him.
Was he dangerous? The Herald-Leader reported, after Mr Clay had been captured:
Juanyah Jamar Clay, 19, was arrested and booked at the Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center Tuesday evening after police said he was wanted for the alleged murder of 26-year-old Bryan D. Greene. Greene was found shot to death in January inside his residence at Eastridge Apartments, police said.
Clay was concealing three handguns on him at the time of his arrest, according to an arrest citation. He also had nearly 3.7 ounces of marijuana, more than 10 Percocet pills, cash and a digital scale with him. The officer who filled out Clay’s arrest citation said all the items were indicative of drug trafficking.
According to jail records, Clay faces eight charges: murder, carrying a concealed weapon, giving an officer false identifying information, receiving a stolen gun, tampering with a prison monitoring device, trafficking in less than 8 ounces of marijuana, trafficking in opiates, and violating conditions of release.
Doesn’t really sound like a very nice guy, does he?
McClatchy’s policy states:
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.
Which raises the question: why did the Herald-Leader publish the mugshot of Ronnie Helton, leaving it up for at least several days, before taking it out of the article? An editor had to have approved publishing Mr Helton’s mugshot for publication on April 23, 2021, and an editor must have approved taking it back down again sometime before May 16th. Mr Helton was already in custody, so he could not have been “an urgent threat to the community,” he was not a “public official or the suspect in a hate crime,” nor a serial killer or high-profile case suspect? (Nothing in the small town of Corbin is high-profile!)
Of course, the McClatchy policy states that “inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness,” and Mr Helton is not a ‘person of color.’
Which brings me to this:
By Bill Estep | May 18, 2021 | 9:59 AM EST
Clawvern Jacobs kidnapped a college student, Judy Ann Howard, in Knott County in 1986 and beat her to death. Kentucky Department of Corrections. Click to enlarge.
Several convicted murderers who had been ordered to spend the rest of their lives behind bars will get another chance at leaving prison under a policy change by the Kentucky Parole Board.Under the old rule, the board sometimes issued a “serve out” order at the first parole hearing for people serving sentences of life or life without the possibility of parole for 25 years.
Inmates are eligible for a parole hearing after 20 years on a life sentence.
An order to serve out meant the person would never get another parole hearing, dying in prison absent a court decision changing his or her conviction or sentence, or a pardon or commutation.
Last month, the board changed the rule to say it would no longer issue serve out orders at the first parole hearing of inmates serving sentences of life or life without parole for at least 25 years, though it could still do so at their second hearing, according to the Department of Corrections.
Donald Bartley was convicted of taking part in the 1985 murder of a University of Kentucky student in Letcher County.
There’s much more at the link, in describing the policy change. The part that gets me? What my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal published five mugshots provided by the Kentucky Department of Corrections of convicted murderers who might benefit from the change in policy, and like the published-and-then-gone mugshot of Ronnie Helton, all of the convicts pictured were white.
Jeffrey B. Coffey was convicted of shooting a young couple to death in Pulaski County in 1995.
I would not normally copy and publish all of these photos, but am doing so as documentary evidence; this is what the Herald-Leader has done.
The story noted that there are 22 convicted criminals who could benefit from the change in policy with parole hearings this year, and 23 others who will be now be eligible for parole hearings in the next several years. I’m pretty sure that I’m good enough at math to realize that’s a total of 45 inmates who may benefit, and the odds that all 45 are white would seem to be pretty small.
Now, there is a difference here: the photos published in the article are all of convicted criminals, not of suspects, and all of those convicts are murderers. But, in publishing these photos, was not the Herald-Leader compromising any chances that they would have of getting a job if any of them are released? Not all of them are of an age in which working again would be unlikely.
Stephanie Spitser strangled her 10-year-old stepson to death in Clay County. The crime happened in November 1992.
I have no sympathy for these killers, and believe that none of them should be released before the day that their victims come back to life. But what I see is what I have suspected before: the Herald-Leader is willing to publish mugshots of criminals who happen to be white.
The Sacramento Bee, the lead McClatchy newspaper, wrote of its policy — which was announced before McClatchy’s in general — that:
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.
Let’s be blunt about this: the editors of the Bee were saying that such publication would show a ‘disproportionate’ number of suspected offenders would be “people of color,” and they did not want the photos of too many black or Hispanic offenders “perpetuating stereotypes” that blacks and/or Hispanics were more likely to commit crimes. It almost looks as though the editors of the Herald-Leader are trying to influence people into believing that murders are primarily committed by white people.
Leif Halvorsen was convicted in the murders of three people in Lexington, Ky., in January 1983.
If you read the entire article, you’ll see that there is a case to be made that the ‘serve out’ orders previously given by the Parole Board aren’t quite legal.
I have no sympathy for the Parole Board, none at all. Cody Alan Arnett was convicted for two robberies in Lexington, on August 7, 2015, and sentenced to five years in prison for each offense. As early as June 26, 2018 he was recommended for parole, and was scheduled to be released on August 1, 2018. This would mean that he served a week less than three years for his (supposedly) consecutive five year sentences. Within two months of his release, Mr Arnett was arrested for the forcible rape at knifepoint of a Georgetown College coed, at a time in which he could have and should have still been in prison. Mr Arnett had five violent felony offenses on his record. Mr Arnett, if he was indeed the rapist, was only able to rape his victim because the Parole Board let him out early. On September 18, 2018, the Herald-Leader published Mr Arnett’s mugshot, but, to be fair about it, that was before the Sacramento Bee article cited above. Then again, the Herald-Leader did publish the mugshot of a criminal suspect, another white guy, on July 21, 2020, more than two weeks after the Bee’s article, though before McClatchy announced its policy in August.
If the editors are truly committed to not ‘disproportionately’ harming ‘people of color,’ perhaps we should ask why the Herald Leader publishes the names of criminal suspects. Let’s be brutally honest again: just seeing the name of Juanyah J Clay, and then the next day as Juanyah Jamar Clay, I knew that the suspect was almost certainly a ‘person of color.’ More, it isn’t the mugshots which hurt, but the names themselves. If Mr Clay happens to be acquitted, and then goes looking for a legitimate job, any human resources department that is worth anything is going to do a Google search of his name, not his photograph, because his name is by far the easier search item.
If 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.”
Journalism supposedly involves finding, and publishing, the truth for that media-outlet’s readers or viewers. But McClatchy in general, and the Herald-Leader specifically, want to obscure the truth, because in some cases, the truth is not politically correct, the truth is not what the bosses want to be the truth.
We had already noted, on May 10th, that the Lexington city government’s shooting investigations page listed 31 then current shooting investigations, in which 24 of the victims were listed as black, 3 as Hispanic, and 4 as white. That, in itself, ought to be news, in that the city is roughly 70.6% white and 14.5% black.
But rather than being news, rather than being something actual journalists would want to investigate, it is something that McClatchy and the Herald-Leader do not want reported, and do want to hide. That’s not journalism, that’s journolism, and yes, I will always call them out on it.
