Is This Responsible Journalism?

Readers of the Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle were treated to a somewhat lurid article regarding the failure of the city's emergency response system.

The system is a failure, the Chronicle implies, because an analysis of over 200,000 emergency response calls shows that "at least 439 people" died when the city's EMT's failed to respond in less than 6-1/2 minutes to high-priority calls.

(Interestingly, the article itself refers to an analysis of 200,000 calls; but the article on the analysis claims the researchers looked at 300,000 calls.)

Now while it is, of course, awful when anyone dies waiting for help to come, I'm not sure what this splashy, colorful article, complete with pictures of accident victims, tells us about emergency services in San Francisco.

439 people is .2% of 200,000 calls. Additionally, some of the people mentioned in the article were quite old and obviously in poor health. That's not to say these people don't matter or got what they deserved, but it is to make this point: no city's emergency heath services can save everyone.

San Francisco is a city of over 775,000, according to the 2000 census. Is it fair or responsible for a city's primary newspaper to suggest that each of these 775,000 has a reasonable expectation to receive medical attention anywhere within the city limits at any time within 6-1/2 minutes? Am I missing something?

Here's a cynical analysis: it's been pointed out in several places that newspaper readership is on the decline. Who is still reading the newspaper is primarily older folks who haven't made the switch to the Internet for news. Presumably. Equally presumably is that readership has been down at the SF Chronicle.

So, who's most likely to need emergency services, or be most fearful that the ambulance might not arrive? Young bloggers, who thumb their nose at health insurance...or...

They could always try the other way of selling papers.