I dunno. From an editor’s point of view, you want to crop to the subject, which is the guy, a smidgen below his knee and above his elbow. The guy’s face stands out more in the second photo. The rest is bland, but he is dynamic. It’s a better picture for a newspaper.

And the photo editor may not even have known it was a knife. When I first saw it, I thought it was a gun barrel hanging down. When I saw the comments, I looked again, and yes, it’s a knife. In general, convenience or stupidity are more likely reasons for error than bad faith, even in a press agency.