Sunday, November 6, 2005
A recent BBC report by Hugh Schofield actually shows some awareness of the role of the media in pouring oil on the fire.
The other reason for pessimism is that the rioters can read in much of the reaction to their rampages a legitimisation of what they have done.
The universal press response - both national and international, left and right - has been to point out how the French model of integration has failed, and how the suburbs have become exploding cauldrons.
From every direction come calls for a new assessment, but some calls are stronger than others.
An editorialist in Le Monde, for example compared the riots to May 1968, and expressed the hope that just as the student uprising forced a major - and in the writer's view - positive change to French society, so will these. That is not exactly an encouragement for the violence to cease.
And from the BBC no less. Is something happening over there? When will it occur to them that they've poured this oil on the Palestinian Intifada for decades?
Richard
