Europe & IslamParis suing Fox News over false report about Muslim “no-go” zones in city

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, said the city would sue Fox News for the network’s false reporting on the city following the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the kosher grocery store.

“When we’re insulted, and when we’ve had an image, then I think we’ll have to sue, I think we’ll have to go to court, in order to have these words removed,” Hidalgo told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour yesterday. “The image of Paris has been prejudiced, and the honor of Paris has been prejudiced.”

Hidalgo was referring to assertions by several Fox TV shows’ hosts and guests that there were “no-go zones” in Paris — that is, neighborhoods where non-Muslims and even police would not enter.

A French satirical TV show called Le Petit Journal ran a segment which showed numerous commentators and guests on Fox shows which repeated the same assertions.

During one broadcast, Fox News showed a map of Paris on the screen which outlined seven such purportedly no-go zones.

The Telegraph reports that other cities in Europe were described by American journalists and politicians as containing no go zones. For example, Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, told a group of British MPs that similar “no-go zones” – where, he said, Sharia law is used rather than British law — have appeared across the United Kingdom.

Last week, Steve Emerson, who was described as an “expert on terrorism,” told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro that parts of France and the entire English city of Birmingham “are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.” Emerson said that,

…no-go zones exist not only in France, but they exist throughout Europe. They’re sort of amorphous, they’re not contiguous necessarily, but they’re sort of safe havens and they’re places where the governments like France, Britain, Sweden, Germany don’t exercise any sovereignty. So you basically have zones where Shariah courts were set up, where Muslim density is very intense, where the police don’t go in, and where it’s basically a separate country almost, a country within a country” (see complete video and transcript here).

A spokesperson for Birmingham city council told the Guardian that the city was not considering joining Paris in their lawsuit.

U.K. prime minister David Cameron told ITV news that he “choked on his porridge” when he first heard Emerson’s comments, before saying that Emerson was “clearly an idiot.”

On Saturday, Fox News issued an unusual on-air apology for Emerson’s statements and for having allowed the network’s anchors and guests to repeat the false claims about Muslim-only “no-go zones” in European cities, and about sections of European cities where Sharia law dominates and state authorities have no control.

Fox Report host Julie Banderas read on-air what she called “a correction,” saying that “over the course of this last week, we have made some regrettable errors on air regarding the Muslim population in Europe, particularly with regard to England and France.” She continued:

Now this applies especially to discussions of so-called no-go zones, areas where non-Muslims allegedly are not allowed in and police supposedly won’t go…. To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country and no credible information to support the assertion that there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion.

Emerson also issued a public apology, directed at the people of Britain, for what he described as “sloppy research that had not been fact-checked.”