You're right but, well, it wouldn't make sense to send a reporter and photographer to the beach in a story critical of people going to the beach.
Couldn't they just admit 'look, we don't have a photo, OK - you know what a damn beach looks like, why do you need a photograph anyway?'. Maybe add the journalist's own crude crayon illustration of "what the beach probably looks like, more-or-less"
What I've noticed is advice columns using stock pictures of (implausibly young-and-photogenic) people, such that you notice the person this week wondering about taking that high-paid job is the same one from a couple of months back who had a heroin-addiction, and who previously had a terminal illness.