Is reporting on San Francisco unfair or just accurate?

The San Francisco Chronicle published a story yesterday complaining about coverage of the city in the news media. It’s titled “‘They’re making up stuff’: How the narrative of S.F. as
dystopian hellscape is affecting the city.” The thesis behind the story is that all this talk of a dystopian doom loop is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.” The story doesn’t actually make very much progress toward proving that.

“They’re making up stuff,” said Rodney Fong, CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. “It is absolutely unfair.”

Civic and business leaders, as well as marketing experts, readily acknowledge that San Francisco faces major social problems amid a sluggish pandemic recovery. But the overwrought narrative that the city is in zombie apocalypse territory can only hurt it, they say.

“It is misrepresenting the city badly,” said longtime press agent Lee Houskeeper. “I get calls every day from people I know across the country, especially after Good Morning America, asking me, ‘Are you OK? Are you in danger?’”…

“Negative news makes potential tenants unfamiliar with the market somewhat jittery about San Francisco,” said Karin Flood, president of the Flood Building, the 1904 edifice at the foot of Powell Street, which formerly housed the Gap’s flagship store. “It’s really disheartening to read so many negative articles. Enough is enough.”

The story ends with a long list of articles from major media outlets about San Francisco’s problems. The list includes one story from FAIR titled “The Character Assassination of San Francisco” which seems like it might have been the jumping off point for this story. FAIR concludes, “This is media outrage focused not at systemic injustice, but based in disgust at the victims of injustice.”

That really does sum up what all of this is about. For the most part, the Chronicle isn’t complaining that the stories by CNN, Good Morning America, the Financial Times, etc. are untrue. The facts are what they are. San Francisco does have a downtown with more empty commercial space than most cities. It does have a string of closing retailers who have cited crime and street conditions as part of the problem. It does have a failing public transportation system that can’t survive apart from handouts from the state. And it does have a serious problems with homelessness, open-air drug dealing, retail theft and car break ins, all of which are worse than in many other cities.

Rather they are arguing that the coverage is wrong, the articles are arguing it’s wrong-think. These things shouldn’t be mentioned so often not because they are false but because they are true and embarrassing to those who would prefer to view the city as a progressive wonderland where everything is gong swell.

Here are a few of the stories I’ve personally written about San Francisco in the past several years. These stretch from 2018 to this year and I’ve left out a bunch more that I and my colleagues wrote. Just skim through these titles and maybe you’ll remember some of them.

• In San Francisco, car owners now begging ‘smash and grab’ thieves to find another target
• San Francisco business owner: ‘We live in a pretty f**ked up city’
• Poll: 72% of San Francisco residents say Bay Area quality of life has declined
• This San Francisco public pooping map is gross and also fascinating
• With more homeless riding San Francisco trains, crime is up and ridership is down
• San Francisco loses Oracle convention over high prices, poor street conditions
• BART system ridership has declined by 10 million over 5 years
• San Francisco: A string of drug stores close after shoplifters strip the shelves bare
• San Francisco Board of Education VP: Meritocracy is a racist system
• San Francisco school board ends merit-based admissions to its top high school
• San Francisco School Board kept a person off their parent advisory committee because he’s a white male
• San Francisco reporter went to cover car break-ins and was robbed at gunpoint
• San Francisco school board member: Many Asians use ‘white supremacist thinking’ to ‘get ahead’
• He wanted to open an ice cream shop but San Francisco stopped him
• SF teachers union agreed to let seniors return to classrooms (as part of a scam to get $12 million in funding)
• Why was an elderly San Francisco man killed? Was it a hate crime?
• San Francisco residents wonder if they should just learn to tolerate burglaries
• San Francisco garage broken into nine times in two days
• San Francisco homeless man: ‘they pay you to be homeless here’
• San Francisco manages to recall embarrassing School Board members
• San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin on rampant theft: ‘It has nothing to do with my policies’
• Education policy analyst: San Francisco’s math de-tracking experiment failed to close the achievement gap
• San Francisco leads the nation in property crime, even the police chief’s son has been robbed twice
• Bay Area poll finds fear of crime is a deterrent to people returning to downtown
• A cab driver was beaten to death with a pipe and DA Boudin’s office treated it as an accidental death
• SF jazz bar gets robbed before and after police arrive
• San Francisco has 45 traffic cops who issue an average of just 10 tickets a day in total
• Castro businesses threaten to stop paying taxes if the city won’t do more to deal with crime and homelessness
• SF grocery store shut down due to rat infestation created by the birdseed lady
• CEO says San Francisco is a ‘city of chaos’ where retail workers are ‘terrified’
• San Francisco is adding a single new public toilet at a cost of $1.7 million
• Did the pandemic create an ‘urban doom loop’?
• It takes 3 years to get a building permit in San Francisco
• The disappearing law-enforcement presence in San Francisco
• Red light: As San Francisco struggles to deal with prostitution, a city supervisor suggests legalizing it
• San Fran Dem: Being robbed by drug addicts is “basic city life experience”
• San Francisco grocery store to close citing deteriorating street conditions
• Another day, another store closing in San Francisco (actually two)
• San Francisco Democrats wanted to make the party more family friendly, they were accused of being covert Republicans
• SF Mayor announced a crack-down on open-air drug markets, but was shouted down and had a brick thrown at her
• Another big retailer is closing in San Francisco and you’ll never guess why

Again, this isn’t everything it’s just some of the highlights over the past five years. Many of these posts were based on stories published in the San Francisco Chronicle. What you won’t find in the entire list is anything made up. As you read over this list you may notice some threads that seem relevant. Homelessness, shoplifting, drug use and business people who are begging for relief. These problems have been around for years it’s just that now the city is no longer able to float above them.

I do hope the city can reframe things and put an end to the negativity, but that shouldn’t happen just because progressive reporters want to be nice to a progressive city. If San Francisco wants good press it needs to earn it. Right now it’s pretty hard to say it deserves any plaudits for how things are going.