Old Media and Burning Cars in France

The media coverage of the fall 2005 riots in France’s banlieues made the image of burning cars into an international icon of French urban mayhem. But in fact the deliberate burning of cars has been a large-scale and endemic phenomenon in the banlieues for many years now — even in times of relative “calm.” It is so widespread and common that it appears to be a kind of urban pastime. The French daily Le Figaro claims, however, to have discovered that the problem is at least worse somewhere else. Thus, in an article titled “The Burning of Cars is More […]