Andrew Neil says "You missed out the gilets jaunes in France"

Those from the anti-globalist (and/or anti-EU) side on my social media feeds regularly castigate the BBC for downplaying - almost to the point of ignoring - the ongoing, large, weekly gilets jaunes protests against the globalist (pro-EU) Macron government in France. 

Such people often accompany their complaints of BBC bias with troubling videos of excessive police violence against the protestors - violence which seem so shocking and so widespread as to be almost incredible in a modern Western European nation.

Such comments always make me think about whether I should seriously investigate this and then blog about the matter.

I'll admit here, in a spirit of transparency, that antisemitic elements with the gilets jaunes have made me squeamish about the whole movement, thus somewhat (but not entirely) squashing my early sympathy for them as being ordinary French people at the end of their tether.

So, is there really an ongoing semi-revolutionary tumult in France that the BBC is playing down, possibly for ideological reasons (i.e. because such scenes might be deeply unhelpful to the anti-Brexit cause in the UK)? Or are these protests nowhere near as signficant as their UK supporters claim, thus justifying the heavy lack of BBC reporting of the story? 

I have to say that I really don't know. I've tried to find out many times, but commentary on the subject is so sharply polarised, when it exists, that it's hard to be sure who to believe. Who's spinning a line? Who isn't?

The rumour that the BBC had a D-notice in operation preventing the reporting of the story widely circulated in the weeks after the protests began but the BBC rejected the claim and countered by pointing to a fair bit of BBC coverage of the gilets jaunes protests. 

It certainly wasn't a huge amount of coverage (to put it mildly) but, still, especially in the early days, that coverage existed and could easily be pointed to. 

So, yes, if you're being cyncial, the BBC had definitely covered themselves. (Some call this kind of thing 'watertight oversight'.) 

And, yes, I've been half-following this all year and my considered impression is that the BBC's coverage was fairly small-scale in the first few weeks and has becoming ever more low-key ever since. (Just search the BBC website for 'gilets jaunes' and you'll see the severe shrinkage in coverage laid out, in a rather difficult to read way.)

Again though, what is the right way to report the gilets jaunes story? What's the right way to 'get it about right'?

Answers on a fire-stained Parisian postcard to the comments field below, if you want. As you can sense, I'm all over the place on this one.

Meanwhile, here's the inevitable exception to the BBC rule that probably proves the BBC rule:

You missed out the gilets jaunes in France. https://t.co/uA2jSxOASB

— Andrew Neil (@afneil) November 2, 2019