France’s Riots & the Media - Culpability in Coverage?
By Denise Best | Related entries in In The News, MediaThere have been numerous reasons cited for the recent rioting in France, ranging from the failed social and fiscal policies to the youths who were electrocuted while allegedly fleeing from the police.
As is often the case in determining a root cause, the drivers that are touted are actually symptoms of the real problem. Nonetheless one point that can be agreed upon is that there doesn’t appear to be a clean and easy fix to the situation at this moment in time.
Another factor which would seem to deserve some consideration is the role of media and publicity in adding fuel to the existing fires - both literal, as well as figurative.
Police said gangs of youths, apparently roused by television images and summoned by Internet blogs, torched 51 cars in Paris on Saturday night, including in attacks at the congested Place de la Republique near the trendy Marais district.
Blazes were also set in 42 cities from Rennes, the capital of Brittany in the north, to Nice on the Cote d’Azur in the south. Details from each day’s violence are not fully known until the next morning.
“What do you expect?” said Paul Merault, a police spokesman interviewed by telephone in the southwestern city of Toulouse, where bands of youths set fire to 50 cars Saturday night. “For the last 10 days these kids have been watching TV, and naturally there is a copycat effect, a desire to imitate what they see on the screen.”
Is the media culpable in its coverage?
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November 7th, 2005 at 11:34 am
No, the media isn’t culpable, if all they’re doing is reporting the fires that are actually there. Should they not report them for fear of copycats?
The fire-setters are culpable. The multicultural ghetto system that is in place in France is culpable.
People burn the things they do not value. Apparently, whatever France has built over the past few decades isn’t valued by many of its immigrants. At least not by the sons and grandsons of immigrants.
I must confess that it’s very difficult to get a clear view on what’s going on in France. The information comes to us as very convoluted. Is it Islamicism on the march? Maybe, maybe not. Arabism? Hooliganism? Is it kids crazed by boredom, reflecting the nihilism of the nanny state that keeps them joylessly dependent? Maybe it’s the glee of setting a fire and seeing it on TV the next day, like a kind of tagging. Maybe it’s all of these things.
I know we here in the US shouldn’t feel too above this sort of thing. It’s tempting to write the whole thing off as a European phenomenon. It probably isn’t.
November 7th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
The (avoidable) Clash of Civilizations
A professor in Middle Eastern History once warned against embracing theories like Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations”. He said the clash of civilizations did not yet exist, but it was a potential self-fulfilling prophecy: By thinking in tho…
November 7th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
Culpable? I doubt it. The youths see what is happening on tv and think it would be fun to do the same. It’s grown well beyond Islamic youths, and now is probably mostly hooligans now.
That being said, I’m willing to bet that if the french government banned all media coverage of the riots, the kids would quickly lose interest, and the riots would end.
November 7th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
” I’m willing to bet that if the french government banned all media coverage of the riots, the kids would quickly lose interest, and the riots would end. ”
Maybe the U.S. government should ban media coverage on Iraq, at least some of it anyway. Maybe insurgents would lose interest when democrats had no news to bemoan president Bush about.
November 7th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
No. The French government should have established a curfew after the third day. And backed it up. Then there would have been nothing to copy.
November 7th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
The reason why the rioting is getting worse is that the rioters know that they’re the ones in control. The anemic response of the French goverment has emboldened them to greater and greater acts of vandalism. What’s really amazing is that there’s been so little loss of life so far.
November 7th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
“What’s really amazing is that there’s been so little loss of life so far. ”
How true. In America, our rioters could do MUCH better.