Radley Balko rebuts YC's Garry Tan over 2021 reporting on SF DA coverage

Journalist Radley Balko responds to a post by Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, who promoted a new book by San Francisco TV reporter Dion Lim and accused Balko of unethical collaboration with then-DA Chesa Boudin’s office to sabotage Lim’s career. Tan framed Lim as a brave truth-teller targeted by Boudin’s staff after she covered anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, citing FOIA-released texts between Balko and victim services head Kasie Lee as evidence of a coordinated hit.

Balko lays out his version of events. After Boudin’s office tipped him that a viral Lim story about a carjacking contained factual errors, he independently interviewed the victim and a witness, Harry Mulholland, both of whom said Lim had pressured them and misstated key details. The charges Lim claimed had been dropped were in fact still active. Balko then published a Washington Post piece using the episode to examine the broader backlash against progressive prosecutors, including misleading crime statistics and false claims circulated by Boudin’s critics.

The piece is less a tech story than a media-ethics dispute that has spread through tech and venture circles via Tan’s platform. Balko argues the narrative repeated by Tan, and previously by conservative outlets, distorts a routine source interaction into a conspiracy, and that the underlying reporting against Lim’s story held up on the facts.