Well, that didn’t take long! Journolism at its finest!

Well, I didn’t have to wait long! Journolism[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ 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 … Continue reading at its finest!

After posting, at 7:42 AM this morning, on the Lexington Herald-Leader eschewing posting the mug shots of black criminal suspects, at 9:02 AM reported Jeremy Chisenhall posted:

$25k stolen in 1 minute. Thieves hit Lexington shops amid national trading card frenzy

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 4, 2021 | 09:02 AM EDT

Lexington police are looking for the man pictured here who is accused of breaking into a trading card shop and stealing merchandise. Provided by Bluegrass Crime Stoppers.

It only took about 68 seconds for a burglary suspect to smash through the front door of Jimmy’s Kentucky Roadshow Shop, a Lexington trading card store, snatch about $25,000 worth of cards and take off.

The cops and owner Jimmy Mahan were on the scene within minutes in the early morning hours of April 29, but it was too late to stop anything. The “smash and grab” burglar was gone with a bunch of unopened, untraceable card packs.

In another burglary last month, a man kicked in the glass door of a different Lexington card shop and made off with a “large quantity” of baseball trading cards, according to Lexington police. The shop, Baseball Card Warehouse, posted about the break-in on Facebook, saying it caused “a mess and a lot of issues with inventory.”

There’s more at the original.

Now, there are some differences. In this case, the (alleged) burglar can’t be identified in the photo provided, and published in the Herald-Leader, where the mugshots come with individual identification. And the (alleged) burglar is on the loose. But the Herald-Leader also declined to print the mugshot of Juanyah J Clay when he was on the loose, and charged with the far more serious crime of murder.

The more immediate difference is obvious: Mr Clay is black, and this unidentified (alleged) burglar appears to be white. Though not directly part of the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, the precursor article, in the Sacramento Bee, let us know what the concern really is:

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.

While I cannot read the minds of Mr Chisenhall, or of Peter Baniak, Executive Editor and General Manager of the newspaper, it almost seems as though the Herald-Leader is attempting to create a stereotype of its own about who commits crime in our community.

But, nahhh, that can’t be it!

References

References
1 The spelling ‘journolist’ 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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