Pretty much the perfect example of the flaws of much modern journalism, to say nothing of the know-nothingism that passes for brains in much of the tech elite.
Several years ago, the Chron initiated a full-bore campaign to "do somethin about" a supposedly immense problem with auto-accident fatalities among the city's bicycle riders and pedestrians. That actual number made my old news reporter's antenne twitch. They didn't seem shockingly high. So I checked them against San Francisco's total population to come up with an annual per-capita pedestrian and bike-rider fatalty number. You guessed it: the result was one of the lowest among all major urban centers in the United States. When I sent a note pointing this out to the lead columnist on the Chron campaign, she never replied and the death dirge continued for several more weeks until it ran out of steam. A far cry from the fact-led journalism of our day, David. Frank Viviano
Thanks Frank. Good points. Plus the murder rate is a third of that in the 1970s!
Pretty much the perfect example of the flaws of much modern journalism, to say nothing of the know-nothingism that passes for brains in much of the tech elite.
Several years ago, the Chron initiated a full-bore campaign to "do somethin about" a supposedly immense problem with auto-accident fatalities among the city's bicycle riders and pedestrians. That actual number made my old news reporter's antenne twitch. They didn't seem shockingly high. So I checked them against San Francisco's total population to come up with an annual per-capita pedestrian and bike-rider fatalty number. You guessed it: the result was one of the lowest among all major urban centers in the United States. When I sent a note pointing this out to the lead columnist on the Chron campaign, she never replied and the death dirge continued for several more weeks until it ran out of steam. A far cry from the fact-led journalism of our day, David. Frank Viviano