The Other McCain

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Leif Halvorsen: The Only Kind of Mugshot the SJW Media Will Let You See

Posted on | May 22, 2021 | Comments Off on Leif Halvorsen: The Only Kind of Mugshot the SJW Media Will Let You See

Say hello to Leif Halvorsen, who was convicted for killing of three people in Kentucky “in a drug-fueled shooting rampage” in 1983. In order to fight “systemic racism,” the Social Justice Warriors who run the McClatchy newspaper cartel have developed a policy against publishing mugshots of criminals, because of the negative impact the publication of such mugshots allegedly has on “marginalized communities.”

Our blog buddy Dana Pico of First Street Journal notes that the McClatchy-owned Lexington Herald-Leader is apparently not adhering to company protocols, because they published Halvorsen’s mugshot in a story about convicted murderers in Kentucky who may be eligible for parole under a new state policy. To illustrate that story, the Herald-Leader published the mugshots of Halvorsen and four other convicted murderers who, perhaps not coincidentally, shared a certain trait with him. Can you guess what that trait was? I think you can.

In their company guidelines about publishing mugshots, McClatchy says that under some circumstances, its policy would permit editors to publish mugshots in cases that met certain exceptions:

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?

None of those seem to apply to Leif Halvorsen, who is currently 66 years old and serving a life sentence, his original death sentence having been commuted by former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin.

Even while the Herald-Leader had no problem publishing the mugshot of Halvorsen — a geriatric prison inmate who is certainly not now “an urgent threat to the community” — they declined to publish mugshots in such cases as Juanyah Clay, who was reportedly at large and wanted on a murder charge for the shooting of a Lexington man. Certainly, this murder suspect was “an urgent threat to the community” because, as Dana notes, here’s what cops found when they finally caught Clay:

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.

A drug dealer with three handguns wanted on a murder warrant, but Juanyah Clay wasn’t deemed “an urgent threat to the community” by the editors of the Herald-Leader? Can you guess why? I think you can.

Obviously, not every local media outlet has surrendered to the kind of SJW mentality that now controls the Lexington Herald-Leader, but as someone who spent more than 20 years in the newspaper business, I must ask this: What happened to “the public’s right to know”?

This was the phrase used by journalists for many decades to defend such controversial decisions as publication of the “Pentagon Papers,” and many other practices. Journalists demanded access to public records (so-called “sunshine laws”) because what government did, in the name of the people, and with taxpayer dollars, ought to be publicly known.

Certainly in matters of law enforcement, the identities of people arrested by police are a matter of public record, as are the mug shots of suspects. No ethical journalist would willingly become complicit in a deliberate effort to conceal such information from the public.

But of course, the unethical SJWs of the McClatchy cartel do not consistently apply their policy of suppressing facts about crime. When Dana emailed me a link to his post, my reply was:

“Leif Halvorsen” might be the whitest name imaginable.
Ah, how low the Nordic ubermenschen have fallen!

That’s the kind of joke Lewis Grizzard might have made back in the day when newspapers hired people who knew how to write, which were also, coincidentally or not, the days when people actually bothered to read newspapers. But those days are gone, and if you want to know who’s committing murder in your community, don’t bother looking at any newspaper owned by the McClatchy cartel, because they won’t tell you.

Unless, of course, the suspect has a name like “Leif Halvorsen.”

Nordic ubermenschen are not yet a “marginalized community.”




 

Category: Crime, Kentucky, Media Bias

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