Defending their reporting, the BBC told GB News: “No one watching, reading or listening to BBC News coverage of the France protests and riots can be in any doubt as to what was happening – there is coverage of the fires, the looting and violence.
“James Waterhouse and the team of reporters in France over the weekend gave broader context to the protests and riots – making the point that as well as the destructive scenes, several hundred thousand people were on the streets in peaceful protest, and those carrying out the violence and looting were a small fraction of that number.”
Outside of Paris, young people ignited rubbish bins and fashioned roadblocks from metal sheeting in Marseille, with footage showing a police vehicle ploughing through a flaming barricade in France’s second-largest city.
Protesters in Bordeaux, wearing dark clothing and face coverings, were seen tearing boards from a building to build a street barricade.