The Fight for the San Francisco Narrative
SELLING YOUR NARRATIVE IS A LOT EASIER IF YOU CAN LIE
Recently, my journeys took me through the Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco. It’s now the Downtown hub for numerous transit services. The architecture is dramatic. The four-block-long rooftop pathway is more pleasant than ever as the gardens’ exquisite greenery matures. As I meandered through the gardens, workers from surrounding buildings enjoyed afternoon strolls and filled the cafes. The building is a great addition to the city.
Curious about the structure, I sought out additional information on YouTube. I was surprised to find a video called “San Francisco’s Salesforce Transit Center is Completely Empty.” This was far from my experience, and patently untrue.
Who would produce such a video? What I found was disturbing: There is a concerted effort to blow San Francisco’s problems out of proportion, and the people doing it seem to have no problem lying to create a false narrative.
For example, there is a YouTube site that has created two negative videos about San Francisco every day for the last eight months; they have over 350 negative videos about the city and have posted nothing whatsoever that is positive. The videos all have provocative titles like: “San Francisco Housing Just Collapsed: Everything’s Worthless,” “San Francisco’s Mansions are Worthless” “San Francisco Stores Are All Empty;” and “San Francisco Collapse is Happening Right Now.” They have thousands of views.
For a second, I wished the headlines were true. Then perhaps I could buy one of those exquisite, but “worthless” mansions in Pacific Heights! Of course, the headlines are all outright lies. San Francisco real estate is still among the most expensive in the nation (the median home value is $1.57 million). Local music and arts events as well as restaurants have been packed recently. The city is not collapsing. Of course, it’s not perfect. No city is. But in many respects, it’s thriving.
Nevertheless, other sites besides the one cited above have followed suit with videos like “Every Tech Company Left San Francisco” and “Every Bank Is Closed in San Francisco.” One of the videos has more than a half million views. The comments sections of those videos are filled with people spewing vitriol about San Francisco politics, crime, and homelessness. From the comments, you can tell that many of the commenters appear to never have even been to the city.
One wonders why the producers of these YouTube videos are doing this. For example, why does one site produce exactly two videos per day? Do they have a contract to produce them? I contacted the site, but they did not respond to my inquiries.
Fox News online, which gets an estimated 800 million hits per month, has a San Francisco page that displays only negative stories. On any given day, you can read about crimes in San Francisco, no matter how minor. You can also get a smorgasbord of hateful commentary about Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor London Breed. The stories are, of course, supported by its subscribers who are quick to add comments (between 500 and 10,000 for every story) eviscerating local politicians and city policies. There is not a shred of equanimity to be found.
Despite the wonderful things going on in perhaps the most beautiful city in the country, there is little in the way of a corresponding positive news narrative. In 2023, local papers published dozens of negative articles with titles like: “SF is struggling and could be in for a big ‘doom loop’,” “When will SF’s economy hit bottom?” and “San Francisco could collapse.” Even the positive articles pander to the negative narrative, starting with apologizing for city problems before saying there are tiny bright spots.
I was heartened when I heard that San Francisco Giants CEO Larry Baer launched “It All Starts Here SF” in advance of the APEC Conference last fall. It’s a campaign to fight the negativity and lies. Its one-minute promotional ad describes disasters the city has overcome and then shows San Francisco’s resilience and beauty. The $4 million campaign was funded mostly by four prominent Bay Area companies.
I was anxious to see what they’d done in their first five months. The answer: next to nothing. The campaign’s website displays only a few stories from October 19 to October 23, 2023. Their YouTube site is empty. It has 115 subscribers — a far cry from Fox’s 800 million hits per month. It’s a blank page that says “This channel doesn’t have any content.”
There are numerous other attempts at positivity by various organizations. They are extremely well-meaning and often very effective. However, they’re more geared to fix problems than fighting the narrative.
Sadly the San Francisco narrative is being lost to those who, for whatever reason, rely on lies and distortions to make San Francisco look as bad as possible. Unfortunately, it’s not a fair fight.
First, the forces of the media against San Francisco are orders of magnitude stronger than the pro-San Francisco forces. Second, it’s far easier to portray the city as a hellscape if you have the latitude of being dishonest. Third, the anti-San Francisco forces have cultivated an audience that is not only willing to believe the lies — they’re anxious to support their own narrative that one of the country’s most progressive cities is a wasteland.
If San Francisco is going to turn this around then small gestures will not do it. We need to invest in a massive effort to change this image — one that accurately displays the city’s beauty, vitality, vibrant cultural scene, and wonderful neighborhoods. This effort includes the local media. We all need to do it immediately before the negative narrative becomes cemented forever.
