While France burns and groups of unidentified, no, unidentifiable, "youths" romp across France in search of self-esteem, the French press finds the really important stories to report.

FRENCH RULING PARTY HAVING A RIOT ON THE INTERNET

PARIS November 7, 2005 (AFP) - Although struggling with worsening urban violence, President Jacques Chirac's ruling conservative party has found the time to make sure it comes out on top in Internet searches on the rioting.

The French version of Google (www.google.fr) returns a sponsored link to www.u-m-p.org, the home page for Chirac's Union for a Popular Majority (UMP), when users type "riots" and "Paris" (or the French words for riots and suburb, "emeutes" [sic]and "banlieuee") into the search field.

Franck Louvrier, Sarkozy's spokesman, said the company hired by the UMP to run the website paid for the link as a way to respond to voters who were e-mailing spontaneous messages of support "every 60 seconds."

[Emphases added.]

The AFP spins this report into something sinister, suggesting that the highest levels of government waste time fretting over search engine results. Why? The Jack pack, incompetent in so many ways -- and we cannot be mistaken for fans -- is doing nothing irresponisble here.

The AFP reports the French riots not as France's shame or France's tragedy, but as high-stakes jockeying for 2K7 political hopefuls. And although the press can successfully identify all the 2K7 presidential players, it still hasn't identified the rioting "youths".

PFFT (What is this?): Jokey journalism 3 | Rayonnement français 0