Riots in France are raging into their fourth week, but American mainstream media outlets like CBS and CNN are having a tough time reporting on exactly why tens of thousands of French citizens are taking to the streets — perhaps because the protests are motivated by French President Emmanuel Macron’s burdensome “anti-Climate Change” policies.
More than 400 people were arrested over the weekend — and more than 200 were injured — as French citizens, clad in the now ubiquitous yellow safety vests (which residents of France are required by law to keep in their vehicles for emergencies) marched down the Champs-Élysées, a tony shopping and restaurant district in central Paris, to protest their ever-increasing government tax burden.
To be sure, Macron’s recent efforts to combat “climate change” and reduce France’s dependence on “fossil fuels” by levying a new tax on gasoline and other household fuels is not the only reason the French are protesting, but fuel tax is the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” French citizens were already hit with a tax increase in January, and more than 60% of the cost of fuel in France comes from government fees.
But if you ask CNN or CBS, the French riots are simply shrouded in mystery.
CBS simply ignored the taxes altogether.
So @CBSEveningNews went through a whole segment on the Paris riots without mentioning that they are riots against taxes to curb global warming.
— Pradheep J. Shanker, M.D., M.S. (@Neoavatara) December 2, 2018
CNN spent hundreds of words dancing around the issue before arguing that France’s protesters were mistaken: the price of fuel in France went up because the price of oil has gone up globally.
“Rising fuel prices are largely attributed to a leap in the wholesale price of oil worldwide,” CNN claimed.
They went on to blame the riots on Macron’s inability to communicate his agenda effectively to the out-of-touch rubes living in France’s version of “flyover country:” “But the protests have evolved into a broader demonstration against Macron, his government, and tensions between the metropolitan elite and rural poor.”
Weirdly, the protests span both the “metropolitan elite” — residents of Paris and France’s major cities — and the “rural poor.” Smaller protests have broken out across the French countryside, and demonstrators there are no less clear on why they’ve taken to the streets: Macron’s “anti-Climate Change” policies have created an unfair burden on French people across the financial spectrum.
Reuters and other, more global news organizations fared better in their coverage, accepting that Macron’s efforts to curb fuel consumption may have gone a step too far.
The American media, of course, has a vested interest in maintaining audience concern over global warming, which is why CNN and CBS left out key details about France’s exorbitant fuel prices; many on the Left would love for the American government to institute similar, heavy-handed controls designed to “save the planet” at taxpayers’ expense.
Macron’s situation is growing more precarious as the riots in France command more global media time. After saying he’d send his Prime Minister to speak to protest leaders in the hopes of working out a compromise, Macron announced late Sunday that he’d consider taking drastic measures to quell street violence, particularly in Paris. He did not specify what those “drastic measures” are.