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.

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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.