GoKawiilReporter Dion Lim, speaking at a conference in 2018 (Photo by Miikka Skaffari/Getty Images)
Over at X, Garry Tan, the president and CEO of the venture capital firm Y Combinator, put up a long post this week touting a new book by San Francisco TV reporter Dion Lim.
Lim’s book, called Amplified, was published by Third State Books, a company started by Tan’s wife, Stephanie Lim, to provide a voice for Asian-American authors. That’s a great idea, and much needed. I’m just not sure they should have made Lim’s book their first title.
Tan titled his post “Power Spoke to Truth. Truth Didn’t Flinch.” He portrays Lim as a heroic, crusading journalist who exposed crimes against Asian-Americans during and after the pandemic. He characterizes her as a brave truth-teller who took on progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who she believed wasn’t sufficiently prosecuting those crimes.
I haven’t read Lim’s book, so I’m not in a position to comment on the bulk of Tan’s post. There were a lot of horrific, bigoted attacks on Asian-Americans at that time, along with a lot of ugly, racist rhetoric — from the White House on down.
But there was also a lot of misinformation about Boudin and his office, including false and misleading allegations that he had stopped prosecuting crimes like shoplifting, and often mistaken accusations that he freed specific people accused of brutal violence. Boudin critics also amplified incorrect or misleading crime statistics, and circulated sensationalistic essays about how San Francisco was dying or was a “failed city.”
The portion of Tan’s post that I can address is the part that pertains to me. And unfortunately, he gets a lot wrong. Here’s the excerpt:
In the summer of 2021, journalist Radley Balko emailed Dion asking who her sources were. A cardinal sin. On June 14, the Washington Post ran “The Bogus Backlash Against Progressive Prosecutors,” which accused Dion of pressuring victims’ families. Through FOIA requests, the public later obtained 81 pages of texts between Kasie Lee, Boudin’s victim services head, and Balko. The files included a document titled “Dion Lim Misrepresentations.” The DA’s office, which should have been prosecuting the people attacking Asian Americans, was orchestrating a media hit on the journalist covering those attacks. Dion’s two Signal sources went silent after the Post piece. “I woke up every morning with a feeling of dread,” she writes. “Oh God, what am I going to be accused of today?” Her management declined to issue a public statement of support. They took her off Boudin stories temporarily. One manager asked her to confirm a source’s account in front of them. Veteran journalist Vic Lee told her the attack was “a badge of honor: how many journalists made elected leaders so scared they went on the offensive?” The message from the DA’s office was clear. Stop covering these anti-Asian hate crimes, or your career is in jeopardy.
This is roughly similar to what I’ve seen in conservative outlets over the last few years. It’s wrong on the facts, and also implies that I and Boudin’s office engaged in some unethical collaboration to sabotage Lim’s career.
I wouldn’t normally comment on my communication with a source, but given that this is a persistent narrative, and that my text exchanges with Lee are already public, I’m going to explain what really happened.
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