Reaction to Dateline America Now: City of Heartbreak and Hope

Yes, Detroit is in crisis. Our school system is suffering, our people are despairing, and our our city, my city's heart has been devastated by tragedy after tragedy.

However, we, her inhabitants posses a fighting spirit and an indomitable strength that only true survivors posses.

This trend of "reporters" traveling across the country to revel in the abandoned factories and collapsed houses of the D in the hopes of finding a story that requires, in all honesty, no actual reporting is exhausting. Chris Hansen should be ashamed to call himself a Detroiter.

I agree that the portrayal of Detroit was accurate HOWEVER it was most certainly slanted. Hansen showed what a bad state Detroit was in, but did he look at why?
Where was the segment on how nearly every other major American city enjoys generous financial support from the State? Taxpayers in up state New York pay taxes for NYC, Taxpayers in Illinois have a tax for Chicago.
Where was the segment on how Urban Sprawl has been slowly rotting the city since the 1970s or how the Big 3 "encouraged" politicians to ignore its decline and continue to grant massive tax breaks that could have gone into researching the emerging Service Sector?
I.E: Pittsburgh's metamorphosis from Steel Town to College Town.

What I feel most people are upset about is that Detroiters know things are bad, but this is how the rest of the WORLD sees us. How are we supposed to encourage new Business to come to Downtown if they think everyone here eats Raccoons and lives in a dilapidated house?

And as for there being 495 liquor stores and only 5 grocery stores, Hansen was, once again misinformed, Detroit, like most big cities, has small markets and bodegas that its citizens can purchase groceries and other toiletries from. There isn't any Krogers or other mega marts in the five burrows either.

Where was Eastern Market? Where were the plans to build a light rail in New Center? Or New Center in general for that matter? Where was the Urban Farms that produce well over 100 pounds of food per garden? And honestly, if I didn't know what Beyond Basics was before Dateline aired, I would still have no idea what it was about now.

Chris Hansen is nothing more than the newest in a line of chicken hawks masquerading as reporters to come to Detroit, in a quest for the most salacious story they can find.