In France this week, we’ve seen a local story spread round the world in flaming images. On Sunday, two teenage boys in the impoverished Parisian suburb of Villiers-le-Bel were killed when the small motorbike they were riding collided with a police car. The incident sparked local riots among youth who blamed police for the teens’ deaths. (An official investigation into the collision is ongoing.)

Whatever the real cause of the accident, it evoked echoes of the national riots that spread across almost 300 similarly economically depressed towns and suburbs throughout the country-and fears that something similar could happen again.  Back in October 2005, two teenage boys were electrocuted when they sought refuge from police in a power sub-station in Clichy-sous-Bois, another downscale suburb of Paris with large minority populations. That incident resulted in 10,000 torched cars and 300 torched buildings over three long weeks. The tough-talking Interior Minister in charge of law and order then, Nicolas Sarkozy, is now president.

This time, though, it seems to be different-at least so far. The two nights of fairly localized, if particularly violent, rioting this Sunday and Monday were indeed disturbing for authorities. They are a reminder that much still needs to be done to reconcile people living on the literal and figurative periphery of French society. And the fact that guns were fired at police, some of whom suffered injuries from buckshot, is a worrisome new development. No shots were fired during the riots of 2005. As then, no one was killed this week, but the use of weapons ratchets up the tension through protracted clashes and the increased risk of a violent police overreaction. 

Yet there’s also a risk that overstating the importance of these riots, especially by categorizing them as a test for President Sarkozy, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Teenage boys in neglected suburbs may well be tempted to create spectacles for armies of cameras come to film their anger. A single burning car framed close-up, on television or in a web or print photo, is deceptively impressive. (The French still joke about how some global media treated the story of the riots in 2005. One international news channel’s map of France put major city names in the wrong places while graphically embellishing them with flames.)

Early this morning, global audiences may have read wire reports lamenting a “third night of rioting.” But that is misleading. Indeed, the same police union spokesman who early Tuesday fed headlines by deploring rioters’ “urban guerilla”-style use of firearms said today that “nothing too nasty” happened last night and that no new shots were fired. That 138 cars were burned across France last night is actually nothing extraordinary--that’s about the average for any night. Violence may flare-up again when the teens killed in Sunday’s collision are buried. Or even before that. Or after. But the media covering the riots have the same responsibility police peppered with buckshot do--to keep the violence in perspective.