Sacramento readers complain about real estate coverage

Armando Acuña, the public editor of the Sacramento Bee, writes about how newspaper readers have complained about its coverage of the real estate market.

Acuña wrote, “In a similar vein, reader Bob Fairbanks of Sacramento criticized the paper for sensationalizing news about home foreclosures.

“He was reacting to a recent front-page story about foreclosures and defaults reaching the highest rates ever recorded in California and that the outlook continued to look grim.

The ‘page one story today with its huge graphic and headline declaring ‘Foreclosures soar to state record’ omitted a key statistic that could have seriously diminished the story’s sensationalistic tone,’ wrote Fairbanks, a retired journalist, in his digital missive.

“‘And that is the number of California mortgages that are NOT being foreclosed. If it turns out that the number of foreclosures, though increasing, remains in some minuscule range, then this ‘sky is falling’ tale clearly belongs more in a supermarket tabloid than in our esteemed Sacramento Bee.'”

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