Petrelis Files

SF Chronicle:
Gays Still Angry Over Staph Stories

More than five weeks ago the San Francisco gay men's community was assaulted by researchers and PR staffers at UCSF with a staph study and a homophobic press release, leading to instantaneous outrage on Castro Street.

Gays were upset with coverage on the infectious outbreak from the Hearst-owned SF Chronicle, and oceans of anger flowed at community forums, in the gay and mainstream press and on countless blogs, bemoaning the rag.

And throughout the five-weeks of well-deserved hostile criticism directed at the Chronicle, the paper dogmatically refused to report on the anger.

But today, the reliable stenographer for UCSF/DPH/AIDS Inc, Sabin Russell, who wrote the original Chronicle stories on the epidemic of staph among gays, finally reports on the community anger.

Why did it take the paper so long to cover the local gay community's criticism?

Basic and decent journalism called upon the Chronicle to print a lengthy reaction piece, which they still could write, not just a few sentences buried in a larger article on developments with staph and its control.

The crumbs from the Chronicle today are duly noted and appreciated, but do not address the longstanding problems of the paper recycling AIDS Inc releases, publishing dozens of "gays = disease" stories that lack balance, and employing hysterics for practically everything on gay health.

From the paper this morning:

Last month, San Francisco General Hospital physicians reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine that a variant of USA 300, resistant to six antibiotics, was "especially common among men who have sex with men."

That report, and the subsequent media coverage of it around the world, deeply angered some members of the city's gay community. Ammiano denounced a report in The Chronicle about it as "irresponsible" and "homophobic," during a committee hearing Wednesday.

He joined with Supervisors Bevan Dufty and Aaron Peskin in a mock hand-washing demonstration, where the men soaped up their hands and rinsed them in an inflatable plastic swimming pool rolled into the City Hall supervisors' chambers.