Is the Leading San Francisco Newspaper playing politics with news?
The San Francisco Chronicle is doing a great disservice to San Francisco voters of District 5 for the November 2024 supervisor’s race.
Chronicle reporter Jill Tucker reported on the latest challenger to Dean Preston’s District 5 seat on the SF Board of Supervisors on March 11, 2024. Before that, SF Chronicle reporters Aldo Toledo and Mario Cortez reported that Bilal Mahmood intended to run. In July 2023, Chronicle reporters Mallory Moench and J.D. Morris reported that another community leader was considering running for the same D5 seat on the board.
But when it came to me filing the papers to challenge Dean Preston in October of 2023, before any other challenger, the SF Chronicle had no interest in reporting that news.
The San Francisco Chronicle should not care that I have lived in San Francisco longer than any, running for the D5 seat combined. The Chronicle should not care that I have been a registered Republican since 1982. The Chronicle should not care that I am a Black man. The Chronicle should not care that I am a homosexual. The Chronicle should not care that I have never been able to walk. And the Chronicle should not care that I wrote a ballot measure on my cell phone while living in my pickup truck that received 98,000 yes votes in the June 2018 special election.
But based on my personal experience, San Francisco voters want to know about a Black, homosexual Republican who has never been able to walk and why he is running. They would like to hear about this candidate spearheading a program to provide public electric wheelchair charging stations throughout the city. San Francisco voters might want to listen to what a current prison reform activist and former Bible study teacher of ten years (1983 to 1993) in the maximum-security unit of the San Francisco juvenile hall has to offer about juvenile justice reform.
San Francisco voters of D5 might want to hear what a man living in his pickup truck from 2009 to 2019 says about our homeless situation and how best to minimize it. San Francisco voters might be interested in hearing about a class-act plan to honor heroes of the world in San Francisco. San Francisco voters want to hear from a candidate for the SF Board of Supervisors about his plans to minimize the embarrassing grandstanding legislation that makes this city seem cuckoo to the rest of the nation.
Sure, it is unreasonable to think that the Chronicle should report on every person running for public office in San Francisco. However, the Chronicle should care if a candidate has something new to offer the voters, especially if the Chronicle is the leading source for print news in San Francisco.
But the San Francisco Chronicle has its agenda; ironically, that’s not news.
