Learn a smattering of nationwide and even worldwide information headlines and you’ll see it: San Francisco has a picture downside.
It’s not simply conservative media slamming town. The New York Instances, the Economist, even British-based publications just like the Unbiased and Sunday Instances have run latest tales on the state of San Francisco, starting from its extremely seen housing points to its shoplifting issues.
“Why San Francisco’s metropolis authorities is so dysfunctional,” reads a headline from the Economist. “Crime is principally authorized in San Francisco,” says one other headline from the Each day Mail. The New York Instances, in the meantime, simply ran an article stating that “the mundane crime of shoplifting has spun uncontrolled in San Francisco, forcing some chain shops to shut.” (SFGATE has revealed a deeper investigation into this declare.)
Ian Davis, a professor of media research at UC Berkeley, advised SFGATE, “Sure, San Francisco’s progressive picture within the American thoughts makes it a main goal for conservatives to criticize. It typically features as a logo of liberal or Democratic insurance policies.”
Certainly, a cursory search of Fox Information headlines from the previous week shows an apparent bias in protection. “San Francisco households now not ‘really feel protected,’ rent personal safety amid crime spree,” reads one headline revealed final week. On the identical day, the media website ran a narrative studying, “San Francisco prosecutors give up progressive DA Chesa Boudin’s workplace, be a part of recall effort.”
Davis cited a Fox Information story from 2019 on the disaster of the unhoused that he mentioned named its bias outright: “In the summertime of 2019, Fox Information launched into an formidable undertaking to chronicle the toll progressive insurance policies have had on the homeless disaster in 4 West Coast cities: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.,” a word on the prime of the story reads.
“All honest factors about housing coverage failures apart, the Fox piece frames the problem as a failure of ‘Democrats’ and the progressive ideology SF has come to represent within the American creativeness,” he mentioned.
“In tales like this, town is used as a logo of progressive coverage failures,” he continued. “Town is a personality in a story that confirms the correctness of conservative politics. Selective quotes additionally allow the reader to see the issue of the unhoused by means of the eyes of these inconvenienced and made uncomfortable by the ‘scary’ folks within the streets.”
The biased media downside is a historic concern. Davis mentioned that till the Eighties, “People lived in a low-choice media surroundings,” which “had the advantage of placing People on the identical web page in regards to the main issues we confronted as a nation.”
“Students and journalists may establish one thing like a unified, mainstream public debate,” he defined.
However within the present high-choice media surroundings, a paradox has emerged.
“The range of obtainable views was speculated to be extra democratic and empowering, however the high-choice media surroundings paradoxically allowed us to insulate ourselves from opposing views and data,” Davis mentioned.
Twentieth-century journalists thought-about information to be “a type of schoolhouse, providing data to foster educated voting and self-governance,” he mentioned, noting that “the twenty first century has shifted the position of reports in public life.”
“The schoolhouse metaphor has given technique to one other metaphor: the church. People more and more use information as a technique to endorse a standard ideological religion,” he mentioned. “Conservatives look to Tucker Carlson to substantiate the evils of Nancy Pelosi and commiserate in regards to the risks of ‘creeping socialism.’ MSNBC viewers tune in to see if Trump can be indicted for his position within the Capitol riots following Biden’s election.”
“In some ways, our selection of reports is a selection of world view,” he continued. “The trustworthy do not go to church to be taught one thing new about what occurred to Jesus. They go to take part in a neighborhood of shared values.”
In an interview with SFGATE, Sam Singer, one in all San Francisco’s prime communications strategists, approached San Francisco’s picture downside from a PR perspective. A former journalist, Singer has labored with Chevron, Airbnb, Disney and the San Francisco Chronicle, amongst others (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are each owned by Hearst however function independently of each other).
“Notion is actuality,” he mentioned.
Singer thinks San Francisco’s picture within the media and past “is someplace between ‘The Wire’ and ‘Squid Sport.’”
“San Francisco has a deep-rooted and important picture and popularity downside,” he mentioned. “In actual fact, I might say that town is in disaster mode.”
Singer mentioned San Francisco’s publicized corruption points at Metropolis Corridor and the Division of Constructing Inspection contribute to town’s popularity. He famous what he referred to as town’s unwillingness to arrest and prosecute criminals, which ends up in viral movies exhibiting thieves operating out of Walgreens with their spoils or tearing by means of Neiman-Marcus with stolen designer purses. (The mayor’s workplace and the Chamber of Commerce didn’t reply to SFGATE’s request for remark.)
Singer additionally mentioned town’s housing disaster, as evidenced by its seen homeless inhabitants, makes San Francisco seem inhospitable to vacationers and locals alike.
“You’re taking a look at a metropolis that’s past the pandemic, that has a pandemic of psychological well being, drug abuse, crime and corruption points. And town must begin to deal with these points or it would fall additional and additional behind,” he mentioned.
Jennifer Friedenbach, the manager director of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, pushed again in opposition to Singer.
“Homelessness shouldn’t be a PR concern,” she advised SFGATE. “It’s a difficulty of poverty. It is a difficulty of racism. And it’s a difficulty of disablism and homophobia. These are large systemic points that want correcting.”
For Friedenbach, the query shouldn’t be essentially why does San Francisco have such a extreme concern of homelessness, however why does such a rich metropolis have such extreme poverty?
“For lots of parents visiting, what I hear from them consistently is, ‘Why don’t you will have assured housing?’ And it’s an ideal query as a result of nearly each different westernized nation does,” she mentioned.
Whereas viral movies comparable to these talked about above inflame the notion that crime is growing in San Francisco, that’s not precisely the case, crime statistics present.
At a July press convention, San Francisco Police Division Chief Invoice Scott famous that rape circumstances, robberies and larceny/theft are all down in San Francisco. Homicides and aggravated assaults had been pretty secure between 2015 and 2021, however the variety of gun violence victims was nearly double in 2021 in contrast with the previous two years.
As for automobile-related crimes, together with break-ins and thefts, each noticed will increase from 2020. Scott additionally famous that burglaries, typically, had been up in 2020 and 2021.
“There’s loads of misinformation in San Francisco,” Scott mentioned. “However on the finish of the day we’ve got to make use of this knowledge to make choices about our insurance policies and our investments.”
An uptick in sure crimes isn’t a difficulty distinctive to San Francisco. New York and Los Angeles, amongst others, have additionally seen a surge in pandemic-era crimes, based on native media and police departments.
However for a lot of, the query nonetheless stays: How does San Francisco repair its picture?
In Singer’s view as a PR knowledgeable, town should first admit to its issues.
“Anybody value their salt in communications, PR, popularity administration or disaster communications received’t attempt to let you know to comb the problems underneath the rug,” he mentioned. “You’ve gotten an issue and it’s a must to take motion.”
He mentioned he would name for the mayor to “declare a disaster not simply on San Francisco’s streets, however on theft and petty crime.”
In Singer’s opinion, town additionally wants to extend “accountability for outcomes from metropolis companies and nonprofits as nicely,” and devise not only a higher communications plan however an operational plan.
All main cities have issues, and generally extremely seen ones at that. However as these of us who stay right here know, these points lengthen far past the realm of PR. Can San Francisco repair its picture to mirror the truth of life right here? Time will inform. The difficulty, as Friedenbach famous, is entrenched.
“I believe San Francisco is getting used as a logo of a progressive left metropolis by conservative pursuits, who’re tremendously exaggerating the state of affairs right here,” she mentioned.
