That ‘Car Break-Ins Are Up 750% In SF’ Report Is Bullsh!t
The San Francisco media landscape’s latest pearl-clutching, panties-in-a-bunching hysteria comes from a report in today’s Chronicle entitled “Car break-ins are up 753% in S.F.’s tourist hub.” KRON-4 declared they had “reported countless auto break-ins caught on surveillance video.” ABC-7, recently busted for falsifying details in a Chesa Boudin hit piece, called it a “troubling trend in San Francisco.”
The apparent return of car break-ins targeting areas frequented by tourists threatens to harm the nascent comeback of the tourism industry, which evaporated during the pandemic.
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) June 27, 2021
All of these reports are bullshit. The Chronicle intentionally cherry-picked the data to only include certain areas that are tourist destinations, and within a very specific COVID-19 affected time frame, to hype a percentage that completely exaggerates the issue to promote an obvious agenda.
Wow, that chart above sure looks shocking! But it only counts the month of May in three consecutive years, and one of those years there was shelter-in-place in effect, and absolutely no tourism! Notice how the 2019 numbers are basically the same as the 2021 numbers, In fact, the citywide total of car break-ins was lower than in 2019, a fact that does not fit with the Chronicle’s agenda and you would not know this from the headline.
The Chronicle even admits to their bullshit in the fifth paragraph of their bullshit article. That’s where they quietly admit that they only counted data from “the northeastern corner of the city, home to seven of the city’s top tourist attractions, including Fisherman’s Wharf and Chinatown.”
Of course car break-ins in tourist neighborhoods are up in the month of May 2021 compared to May 2020, because tourist neighborhoods were ghost towns in May 2020. But that key detail isn’t being discussed much in these reports, because some local news outlets would rather report Fox News than actual news. And let’s be honest, these outlets are being played by people who can’t stand having a progressive socialist district attorney.
4 Comments
re: “pearl-clutching, panties-in-a-bunching hysteria” caption
I’m curious if there are non-gendered cliches Broke-Ass Stuart might use to refer to unreasonable fear? (Is there equivalent male-focused language? I’m not coming up with any.)
Thanks for giving it consideration. You normally do, and it’s one reason I read your newsletter regularly.
Thanks for straightening things out.
You obviously don’t drive a car in this city or visited fisherman’s wharf, Alamo square in the past 3 months? It’s disgusting and embarrassing to see all these break ins
thanks for fighting back against the new country wide ‘crime hysteria crap’….yes it’s going up, and yes it may go up more, that usually happens the more poor, the more addicted, the more dying young people. But nothing is near the 80’s or even the early 90’s , when the economy was actually much more stable, and rents and health care costs had not exploded in the aughts and worse to present. Anyway, you probably know, but Fair………dot……..org….has been doing great in-depth factual articles over this….