CNN will continue its Fox News tilt this Sunday night with an hour-long special called ‘What Happened to San Francisco?’ a mini-documentary determined to push the “failed city” narrative.
It’s fair to wonder lately, “What Happened to CNN?” From their universally panned Trump town hall Wednesday night, to their inability to figure out what to do with the prime-time 6 p.m. PT slot after they were forced to fire the wildly unqualified but nepotistically connected Chris Cuomo, CNN lately seems, how would Don Lemon put it, “past their prime.” But in a little Sunday night ratings grab, KRON4 reports that CNN will be airing an hour-long SF-bashing mini-documentary called “What Happened to San Francisco?”
We cannot embed the trailer for this show, but you can watch it here. And it's hosted by Sara Sidner, an absolutely fearless and top-notch journalist. In the trailer, Sidner says “I love this city, I truly love this city and I still do. It’s just that it hurts to see what happened to it.” The screen then shifts to a montage of images of homelessness and drug use, and residents complaining the city has a “No-punishment kind of attitude.”
There are a few clips from underemployed people who’ve turned into Twitter's biggest anti-SF shit-stirrers, plus we have the infamous Walgreens shoplifter on a bike video, the Union Square smash-and-grab, and an off-screen voice wonders aloud, “Why are people feeling empowered that they can do this with impunity?”
According to the Chronicle, a press release for the special says San Francisco is “at the forefront of the nation’s homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction crises,” and adds that “some residents worry Northern California’s largest municipality could become a so-called failed city.”
Failed city? San Francisco has a GDP of more than $600 billion, fourth-largest in the U.S. And I imagine CNN will not report that SF’s homelessness rate was trending downward last year, or that San Francisco ranks No. 14 for violent crime in the nation, well below some other major metros — and that violent crime is twice as frequent in cities like Houston and Dallas.
Also, look at some of these headlines.
— Roland Li (@rolandlisf) May 12, 2023
They're from 2019, when SF was booming (which yes, was also a cause of some of our current and past challenges).
(That Insider photo is from Oakland for some reason)https://t.co/QPNTejMpR7 pic.twitter.com/ZiwsG0QgqG
The Chronicle's Roland Li, who’s certainly had the term “doom loop” atop many of his articles, points out in the above tweet how San Francisco-bashing has always been a media cottage industry, even in the boomiest of boom times. The media has had a fascination with trashing San Francisco seemingly for decades. Yes, you are more likely to get your window broken in SF than, say, Houston, But you are far more likely to be murdered in Houston, so I’ll take my chances here by the Bay.
Image: Hardik Pandya via Unsplash
