It's a trend of recent years: for some reason news articles are allergic to images. I've seen articles describing the works or painters with zero images!
It’s not a recent trend. It’s how things have been and are.
My best explanation is that it’s a holdover from when print space was limited, so articles simply don’t show and only tell. When they do add a picture in print, it’s usually to grab attention or signal that this is an important article.
