4 ms·

Naming PG&E in the headline is sensationalistic. The article says, "Workers may have struck the distribution pipeline while installing fiber-optic equipment ben

by wahern 8y ago

Naming PG&E in the headline is sensationalistic. The article says, "Workers may have struck the distribution pipeline while installing fiber-optic equipment beneath the street". You can see the excavator from the aerial footage! And news reports directly discuss the construction workers. By contrast, there's absolutely zero evidence PG&E has anything to do with it except nominally owning the pipe.

twblalock 8y ago
The real headline on Bloomberg's site at the moment is "PG&E Contains Gas Leak That Caused San Francisco Explosion," which gives a very different impression.
- floatingatoll 8y ago
  Compare to: “PG&E unable to contain gas leak that caused explosion for over 2 hours” Just as true, just as biased. Yours is biased towards “just the current state only”, mine is biased towards “they are incompetent”. Bias is unavoidable. Simply stating facts makes it easier to disguise bias, and does not guarantee a lack thereof.
snazz 8y ago
I agree, it does seem to be unnecessary to mention the utility that owned the pipe in this case since they didn’t cause the accident. It’s fair to mention them in the body of the article, though, since it was only PG&E customers served by that particular pipe who were affected by the outages. Edit: now that I reread the original article title, I think it sounds much better than the current HN title.
- mc32 8y ago
  Bloomberg changed their title after article was posted.
mc32 8y ago
And the media wonder why they have a credibility problem. It's the most basic type of reporting. News events. Not complicated policy issues or complex expert subject. Something occurred on the street and what do they do? They try to pile on the narrative that PG&E is bad. They supposedly caused the Tubbs fire, but according to CalFire[1] apparently (at least at this stage of the investigation) caused by non-PG&E power equipment (no word on Paradise, but that will take a while). [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/cal-fire-private-equipment-not-pge-at-fault-for-deadly-tubbs-fire.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/cal-fire-private-equipment-n...
- JauntyHatAngle 8y ago
  Unless Bloomberg changed their headline, that is the fault of the submitter and not the media. The original headline is fine.
  - Impossible 8y ago
    Submitter here. Bloomberg changed their headline. I copy and pasted the headline from the time I saw the article and didn't hand write anything or sensationalize it. Here is a screenshot of a messenger post from the person that shared the article with me originally http://tinypic.com/r/2rcn9qe/9 http://tinypic.com/r/2rcn9qe/9
    - eganist 8y ago
      Please never use tinypic again. For whatever interesting reason and with 100% repro in one particular instance of Firefox on my phone (suggesting that browser's fingerprint is triggering an ad network to serve a malicious ad), tinypic or an ad network on the site currently rewires the back button (in this case the back key in Android) to a nasty series of redirects ultimately culminating in one last one which Firefox successfully interrupted. https://i.imgur.com/tWfPvaC.jpg https://i.imgur.com/tWfPvaC.jpg
      - Impossible 8y ago
        I agree it's pretty bad but I was on my phone at the time and didn't see a way to upload to imgur without signing up for an account and downloading their app.
jdavis703 8y ago
It took them over 2 hours to shut off the line. I don’t know what a reasonable response time is here, but it seems like taking 2 hours to locate a shut off valve during an emergency is bad... further what happens when the next earthquake strikes? Do we just accept that PG&E will just let the entire city burn?
- calebio 8y ago
  Not offering an opinion, just some of the things I heard while watching: - CA law requires that any digging near a gas main/asphalt to be done by hand, which required the workers to manually trench out the line to squeeze the pipe/shut it off. - SF has been cold recently, and it was determined that shutting off gas for the wider area would negatively impact the health of nearby residents (more so than the fire). - The fire was contained, but not under control. - The closest shutoff was rumored to be right under/near the gas break/fire.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    Cold? Ha! Yeah right. That being said I thought the system had auto shut off valves in the event of an earthquake.

by wahern 8y ago

twblalock 8y ago

The real headline on Bloomberg's site at the moment is "PG&E Contains Gas Leak That Caused San Francisco Explosion," which gives a very different impression.

floatingatoll 8y ago
Compare to: “PG&E unable to contain gas leak that caused explosion for over 2 hours” Just as true, just as biased. Yours is biased towards “just the current state only”, mine is biased towards “they are incompetent”. Bias is unavoidable. Simply stating facts makes it easier to disguise bias, and does not guarantee a lack thereof.

snazz 8y ago

I agree, it does seem to be unnecessary to mention the utility that owned the pipe in this case since they didn’t cause the accident. It’s fair to mention them in the body of the article, though, since it was only PG&E customers served by that particular pipe who were affected by the outages. Edit: now that I reread the original article title, I think it sounds much better than the current HN title.

mc32 8y ago
Bloomberg changed their title after article was posted.

mc32 8y ago

And the media wonder why they have a credibility problem. It's the most basic type of reporting. News events. Not complicated policy issues or complex expert subject. Something occurred on the street and what do they do? They try to pile on the narrative that PG&E is bad. They supposedly caused the Tubbs fire, but according to CalFire[1] apparently (at least at this stage of the investigation) caused by non-PG&E power equipment (no word on Paradise, but that will take a while). [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/cal-fire-private-equipment-not-pge-at-fault-for-deadly-tubbs-fire.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/cal-fire-private-equipment-n...

JauntyHatAngle 8y ago
Unless Bloomberg changed their headline, that is the fault of the submitter and not the media. The original headline is fine.
- Impossible 8y ago
  Submitter here. Bloomberg changed their headline. I copy and pasted the headline from the time I saw the article and didn't hand write anything or sensationalize it. Here is a screenshot of a messenger post from the person that shared the article with me originally http://tinypic.com/r/2rcn9qe/9 http://tinypic.com/r/2rcn9qe/9
  - eganist 8y ago
    Please never use tinypic again. For whatever interesting reason and with 100% repro in one particular instance of Firefox on my phone (suggesting that browser's fingerprint is triggering an ad network to serve a malicious ad), tinypic or an ad network on the site currently rewires the back button (in this case the back key in Android) to a nasty series of redirects ultimately culminating in one last one which Firefox successfully interrupted. https://i.imgur.com/tWfPvaC.jpg https://i.imgur.com/tWfPvaC.jpg
    - Impossible 8y ago
      I agree it's pretty bad but I was on my phone at the time and didn't see a way to upload to imgur without signing up for an account and downloading their app.

jdavis703 8y ago

It took them over 2 hours to shut off the line. I don’t know what a reasonable response time is here, but it seems like taking 2 hours to locate a shut off valve during an emergency is bad... further what happens when the next earthquake strikes? Do we just accept that PG&E will just let the entire city burn?

calebio 8y ago
Not offering an opinion, just some of the things I heard while watching: - CA law requires that any digging near a gas main/asphalt to be done by hand, which required the workers to manually trench out the line to squeeze the pipe/shut it off. - SF has been cold recently, and it was determined that shutting off gas for the wider area would negatively impact the health of nearby residents (more so than the fire). - The fire was contained, but not under control. - The closest shutoff was rumored to be right under/near the gas break/fire.
- sjg007 8y ago
  Cold? Ha! Yeah right. That being said I thought the system had auto shut off valves in the event of an earthquake.