Washington Post mocked for insisting San Francisco isn’t really ‘buried under mounds of excrement’

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Washington Post columnist Philip Bump fact-checked San Francisco’s human feces problem with various interpretations of defecation maps, some suggesting a few streets are actually poop-free, while another revealed a "magenta poopstorm." 

The stinky ordeal began when Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom during last week’s Fox News debate by holding up a map of San Francisco showing how human feces has been discovered throughout the city and saying California residents have the "freedom to defecate in public."

On the map displayed by DeSantis, the majority of San Francisco was covered by brown markers used to indicate where human feces has been found. Bump indicated that people who looked at DeSantis’ map might think the entire city was literally overflowing and surrounded with human waste, making it impossible to live without swimming through sewage. 

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Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Washington Post columnist Philip Bump. (Screengrab/Getty)

Bump rushed to San Francisco’s defense, writing an entry in his newsletter about data visualizations that the map wouldn’t have looked so outrageous if DeSantis’ version simply used smaller markers to determine where people have pooped in San Francisco streets. 

"In reality, almost the whole thing is covered because the map — which is a real thing — chooses to depict the human feces with very large markers. It’s a good example of how seemingly objective maps can, depending on presentation, be very misleading," Bump wrote, noting the map’s data came from the city’s Department of Public Works.

Bump even included a link to a live cam of San Francisco Bay to prove the entire city is not "buried under mounds of excrement." 

Bump, who chose magenta instead of brown "since it’s a more pleasant color," recreated the same map but with smaller markers. He admitted his magenta still showed an awful lot of human feces. 

"This isn’t much less crowded than DeSantis’s brown version," Bump wrote before explaining that he could make the markers even bigger to "make the defecatory deluge even more oppressive."

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Washington Post columnist Philip Bump was mocked after attempting to downplay San Francisco’s human feces problem. (Gabrielle Lurie/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

The Post then published a map with larger markers to show where humans have defecated on San Francisco streets. 

"The magenta poopstorm is now so enormous that there is no more San Francisco to speak of! Haight stoners are leisurely struggling to the surface for fresh air! Tech bros are shedding feces-covered vests with abandon! It’s chaos," Bump joked before doing the opposite and making the poop markers even smaller. 

"If, on the other hand, we make the dots much smaller, the picture changes entirely," Bump explained. "Now, we see San Francisco mostly as San Francisco, with a little blotch of magenta up in the northeastern corner near Union Square."

Bump then analyzed his research and concluded that some San Francisco streets have managed to remain free of human feces, and he admitted the city has a "problem with human waste," but attempted to shame DeSantis for using the big brown map. 

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People inhabit encampments on the streets of San Francisco, California on Friday, April 14, 2023. Homelessness and crime continue to plague the city’s Tenderloin District. (Flight Risk for Fox News Digital)

"At left are streets with few incidents; at right, the epicenter. Use gigantic poop emojis to mark each spot and you get misleading results," Bump wrote. "None of this is to say that San Francisco doesn’t have a problem with human waste. It does. It is, instead, to say that the poop problem isn’t as bad as DeSantis’s big brown map would suggest."

Many mocked Bump's fecal fact-check: 

Bump, who deleted a message on X promoting his magenta map, declined comment. 

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Fox News' Jeffrey Clark contributed to this report.