What’d the pistols ever do to you?
I checked the map and found Pier 14 mentioned in the OP is just across the street from the TV centre. No one even mentioned that earlier.
Did you know Los Angeles is the 2nd largest city in the U.S.? To get the same population, add Little Rock and Texarkana together, multiply by by twelve and then add another million. And San Francisco is still a major financial center and often considered one of the great cities of the world. TL;DR: Your comparison is laughable.
AFAICR I’ve never been to Arkansas but I have heard of Little Rock. 
Well you know, many news crews walk around acting like their immune to anything around them. What, they think they are just another bystander? They are standing there with cameras and microphones injecting themselves into a situation. This was bound to happen.
I can’t decide if aceplace57 is being deliberately surreal here or not. No, the “famous” Santa Monica Pier isn’t at all close to San Francisco’s Pier 14. Even San Francisco’s famous Pier 39 is 6 miles away, so a half hour drive (on a good day) and another hour to find parking.
The theory about this being a drug cartel obtaining equipment to film their atrocities is good, but too complicated. The simplest explanation is that the muggers were disguised space aliens who want to record their conquest of Earth, but need local equipment because the camera they brought with them uses Beta tapes.
By being delicious
Drug cartel thing could totally be true. I saw something similar happen once on this documentary called Breaking Bad. Kudos to aceplace for having the solid grip on reality and geography to really drive this thread.
A suspect has been arrested in the mugging of the news crew. Here’s the story.
Actually, Pier 14 and Pier 39 are about a mile and a half apart.