Speaking in code continues

The American Thinker did an excellent mini-post about the riots taking place in a Paris suburb for the last four days. According to Thomas Lifson, the BBC was careful never to mention the fact that the rioters were Muslims, which is actually an extremely important issue in France where Muslims are (a) the single largest minority group and (b) usually concentrated in poor suburbs outside major urban areas. Lifson targeted the BBC as being especially interested in maintaining the polite fiction that it was just, ya' know, non-identifiable people who rioted. This same problem affected both the BBC and British officials when they had to deal with black on Muslim riots in England. I found it interesting that the taboo exists in the American press as well, although reporters did drop in a few code words here and there. Thus, in the CNN report on the fourth night of rioting, while the rioters are never identified we do learn that, for reasons never explained, the police fired tear gas into a mosque, that the Interior Minister met with the President of the Muslim community, and that two "African" teenagers were electrocuted when they fled police. I mean, it doesn't take a genius IQ to figure out that this rioters are Muslims, but good reporting shouldn't make a reader have to figure out this essential bit of information. As Lifson says with splendid disdain "Life was simpler when news agencies simply reported the news, rather than encoded it." Incidentally, if you want some really good insights on the press's self-censorship concerning the riots, be sure to check out Laer's post about the subject.