Chronicle Exploits Meeting With Galvin to Bash Homeless

“We thought we had an opportunity to discuss these issues informally,” said Galvin, “and to suggest that [the Chronicle] take a broader view of the problem. Homelessness must be set within the social context of extreme poverty – not just to see the symptoms and grapple with them endlessly.” Instead, Nevius pulled a cheap shot to stereotype homeless advocates the way he has stereotyped the homeless over the past five months.

When talking to the press, you always run the risk that things you say are not “off the record” – and the Chronicle never promised not to publish anything that came out of that meeting. “But I wouldn’t think that if you sit down to have a conversation,” said Galvin, “that it would be on the front page the very next day. The intention was never to make this meeting a ‘news story.’ [Nevius] could have had the courtesy to at least say that he would turn it into another one of his columns.”

As Nevius himself admitted, Galvin is not some naïve rookie who should have known better when meeting with professional journalists. The religious homeless advocate has met with the Chronicle Editorial Board in the past – and those meetings would never be so blatantly exploited in that way. “It’s never been my experience when meeting with such groups,” she said. “We were just morally troubled by the Chronicle’s coverage of homelessness in the past five months, and wanted to have a conversation.”

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