Monday, November 14, 2005

Why so much MSM riot reporting is nonsense

(Welcome visitors from Betsy's Page. )

A lot of MSM reporting on the riots in France is nonsense.

We're told rioters wearing Armani leather jackets who torch cars and ride off on deluxe motor scooters are “impoverished youths.”

MSM informs us that neither Muslim fundamentalists nor major drug dealers have much to do with the riots, despite their being in many riot areas more dominant forces than the police.

Now, the Associated Press, obviously responding to a comment by President Chirac that parents bear some responsibility for their children’s behavior, tells us the rioters’ parents are – what else – victims of circumstances that prevent them from effectively parenting.

Here’s an example of what the AP's saying:

(Parents) often can hardly communicate with their sons and daughters: Many parents are not French citizens and never learn to speak French, while their children don't learn the language of their ancestors.
That’s just more nonsense.

If parents speak one language in the home, it becomes their child’s first language, even if another language is the dominant one outside the home.

Parents who speak only one language surround themselves and their child with friends and neighbors who speak that same language. They listen to radio and watch TV broadcasting in that language. In France, for instance, Middle Eastern and North African stations are widely available.

By age 5, a child raised in such a language environment typically has a functional vocabulary of thousands of words and an understanding of language structure that allows him to form sentences; and understand and express concrete and abstract wishes, thoughts, etc., with his parents.

When a child begins to learn a second language, it doesn't prevent him from continuing to develop skill in his first language through conversation with his parents and immersion in their linguistic culture.

That's proven by the bilingualism of hundreds of thousands of first generation children of Middle Eastern and North African immigrants now living in France.

But if the AP told us any of that, it would have a harder job selling the "rioters as victims" storyline.

The next thing you know, people would notice that almost all poor immigrants in France and their first- and second-generation children aren’t rioting; and the whole MSM "rioters as victims" storyline could start to crumble.

We might even get to a point where the rioters were blamed for the riots. How many liberal MSM journalists and news organizations want that to happen?

So it's not hard to understand why the AP gave us the nonsense about parents who could "hardly communicate with their sons and daughters."

Readers note: You may enjoy a look at this brief post about Sir. Winston S. Churchill and his valet.

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