For decades, American broadcast news networks have touted the benefits of socialism in France, from government-funded day care to healthcare to a mandated five weeks of vacation. Then-NBC host Katie Couric summed it up in 2001: “The French, they’ve got it right, don’t they?”
Socialism is always a warm, comforting blanket. It can’t ever fail. So, when violent rioting recently broke out in Paris and other cities, the preferred TV term was failing “public services.”
On Oct. 19, ABC foreign correspondent Tom Soufi-Burridge said: “The protest Saturday, involving hundreds of thousands of people, were supposed to be about the cost of living, and the state of France’s public services, but the situation quickly spiraled out of control in multiple French cities.”
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“CBS Mornings” star Gayle King echoed it: “The demonstrations began to protest the rising costs of living and declining public services.” CBS reporter Aidan Stretch also cited a “ballooning government deficit,” which is code for overspending. The socialists would blame undertaxing.
Most network reports didn’t avoid that there was violent rioting, looting and property destruction. But they claimed the protests were “hijacked” by bad people. CBS’s Stretch pushed the split: “The most extreme unrest was in cities across France, where protests over poor school conditions and worker pay were hijacked by masked rioters who torched cars, burned down government buildings and looted stores, stealing most of the inventory from this boxing shop.”
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On the “PBS News Hour,” Ross Cullen blamed “underinvestment” by the socialists: “More than 600,000 people took part in peaceful rallies across the country, a convergence of different protest movements demonstrating against high gas prices, rising inflation, and underinvestment in public services. But the unrest that took hold after the demonstrations was unprecedented.”
There was still some ludicrous “mostly peaceful” phrasing. Many mocked the BBC, as its Paris-based reporter James Waterhouse claimed, “They were mostly peaceful, but as we saw in the capital, in the wings were those who wanted to take advantage of the disorder.”
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He toed that line that there were “genuine protesters,” ruined by opportunist thugs: “And this morning, in Paris and across France, there is an anger. Few believe this was at the hands of the genuine protesters, but down to an opportunistic minority who came in and sought to rob and cause carnage.” That throbs with support for the radicals organizing this movement, just as the BBC and American networks promoted Black Lives Matter in the violent protests and rioting after George Floyd’s death in 2020.
National Public Radio struggled with how all this unrest could be exploited. A morning news anchor lamented: “The French far right is capitalizing on what is described as the seeming failure of President [Emmanuel] Macron’s government to keep order.” Seeming failure? NPR heard from French political scientist Dominique Moisi, warning about the right wing: “The risk that Marine Le Pen will be the next president of France are very real, very high.”
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NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel also lamented the “far right” exploiting it all. “We were there earlier this month as student protests over school conditions, initially peaceful, were growing and meeting resistance. Some of the demonstrators are trying to kick it away, to throw it away. Why all of this now? A mix of discontented youth, economic anxiety and politics, with France’s far right saying all of the mayhem is caused by illegal immigration – hoping to capitalize on these scenes to win national elections just six months from now.”
The “far right” in France are defined as extreme for their ardent opposition to mass migration, especially from Muslim countries, and how it will make France more like the Third World. President Donald Trump was very outspoken about letting in immigrants who hate Western civilization: “If Europe doesn’t close its borders and bring the criminals out, like the people that are protesting, Europe is finished.”
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CNN and MS NOW joined in denouncing Trump for “fearmongering” over riots in “darker overtones” for political gain, which is pretty rich considering how the entire elitist media couldn’t stop talking about the Jan. 6 riot for four years to punish Republicans.
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Network TV coverage avoided showing Palestinian flags and other signs of Islamic “resistance.” When activist Greta Thunberg shows up at your protests, it’s radical left and “pro-Palestinian.” This also happened in the newspapers. Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tweeted: “I asked Grok if the NYT [New York Times] or WP [Washington Post] have shown any pictures of the rioters in France holding Palestinian flags. The answer is no. Why are these papers hiding the truth? Why are they sanitizing the news to protect Islamists?”
On the left, wokeness unites socialists and Muslims in a “diversity” framework advocating for the “marginalized.” They chant “Free Palestine” as if Gaza was all about liberty and democracy. They don’t want anyone to consider who gets marginalized in Muslim-dominated theocracies. And they won’t report accurately when leftists riot abroad or at home.