A Czech reporter saw the highlights of San Francisco. Then he was robbed.

Bohumil Vostal, correspondent for a Czech public television channel, reported on the best parts of San Francisco on Sunday. He toured an art gallery, visited Chinatown and even hired a guide with a vintage Volkswagen bus to drive him to the Golden Gate Bridge.

He planned to end his segment that sunny afternoon in front of City Lights Bookstore, an indie store and publisher that helped spark the beat poetry movement.

But then the dark side of San Francisco came into full view. Suddenly, Mr. Vostal found himself victimized in precisely the high-profile way that city leaders had hoped to avoid at this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, which is drawing President Biden, other world leaders and legions of international journalists.

On a sidewalk across the street from the bookstore, assailants wearing balaclavas charged toward Mr. Vostal and a cameraman. The attackers pointed their weapons at Mr. Vostal’s head and the cameraman’s stomach and ordered them not to cause trouble, Mr. Vostal said.

The thieves took $18,000 worth of equipment, including a camera, lights and a tripod, and jumped into a getaway car as a stunned Mr Vostal tried in vain to remember his license plate number.

“They took my research, my time and my ideas,” said Mr. Vostal, distraught over the loss of all his footage. “That’s why I’m angry, you know?”

It wasn’t the APEC storyline San Francisco’s leaders wanted as they furiously cleaned up the city and filled the streets with more law enforcement.

That wasn’t what they wanted when they launched a media hospitality campaign to show visiting journalists the positives of San Francisco, whose reputation has plummeted since the pandemic began.

City leaders have a media center next to the APEC confab, filled with city swag and featuring appearances from local celebrities, including the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus and Lou Seal, the mascot of the San Francisco Giants. They also offer journalists free trips, including boat rides on the bay, tours of museum exhibits and behind-the-scenes excursions to the Chase Center, where the Golden State Warriors play.

The tour of the top floor of the Salesforce Tower, the tallest building in San Francisco with stunning views of the bay, would be the hottest ticket of all.

If the media campaign seems a bit overblown, that’s because San Francisco still has a lot to overcome. Foreign journalists have seen the same dystopian headlines and social media videos about public drug use, homelessness and car break-ins that Americans have seen.

Yuki Ishii of Fuji Television Network in Japan picked up her media credentials at the Grand Hyatt hotel just after arriving on Monday. She said she had heard a lot about San Francisco and expected the worst.

“We thought there might be zombies,” Ms. Ishii said without a hint of humor. “So far so good.”

Near City Hall, Ilmari Reunamaki, a television reporter from Finland, said he was trying to show the city in “an honest way,” but he wasn’t sure how accurate he was getting the image. His crew was shooting a segment at United Nations Plaza, which recently got a makeover with a skateboard park and a patio with ping-pong tables.

“We heard that normally there are five times as many tents and now there are five times as many officers,” he said.

Joyce Tseng, a television reporter for TaiwanPlus, said Tuesday that she found San Francisco cleaner and busier than when she visited a friend here in January. Her friends and family were nervous about her current journey, she said, and warned her against walking alone at night, especially since she is a woman.

“I told them, ‘This is for APEC! All the world leaders are coming!’” she said. “But they were still concerned.”

Mr. Vostal, the Czech reporter, faced the same attack that other media crews have faced in the Bay Area in recent years. They are often vulnerable because they are out in public carrying thousands of dollars of equipment.

The incidents are so common that Bay Area television stations regularly send their reporters out with private security. In one particularly tragic case nearly two years ago, Kevin Nishita, a former police officer who worked as a security guard, was shot and killed in Oakland while trying to protect a television crew from being robbed.

The journalists were there to report on an earlier robbery.

San Franciscans tried to make up for the loss of Mr. Vostal this week with an outpouring of sympathy.

After Mr Vostal and his cameraman passed their bill to the police, they went to the Irish Bank, a bar near their hotel, for a much-needed beer. When the bartender and other customers heard the story, they treated the Czech duo to several rounds, gave them hugs and asked them to come back to San Francisco someday.

On Monday, the two journalists went to City Hall to film an interview with Mayor London Breed, using a backup, a smaller camera they had left and lights donated by a local television station. She assured them that police were working hard to find the perpetrators.

“I don’t know when, but we will be back,” Mr. Vostal promised. ‘And we will make very nice reports about San Francisco.’