City council approves lawsuit against ‘bloopers factory’ Fox News for incorrectly reporting in wake of Charlie Hebdo attack that some city areas ban non-Muslims

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The Paris city council voted to green-light a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to hold Fox News responsible for incorrectly reporting that there are “no-go zones” in Paris where non-Muslims are unwelcome and sharia law holds sway.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, the main proponent of the lawsuit, said the “honor of Paris” was at stake. “I’ve received a lot of encouragements from Americans to try to make this kind of nonsense stop,” Hidalgo was quoted in the French press as saying Thursday. “I don’t accept insults to our city and its inhabitants.”

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The vote in favor of the lawsuit was not unanimous. One Paris councilman said that it would “not serve any purpose to pursue a defamation case against a veritable bloopers factory” such as Fox, and the “no-go zone” insult was not the first and would not be the last.

Another council member said Hidalgo should seek understanding and offer to treat the Fox journalists to a stay in Paris and show them around.

“I personally don’t think it’s funny,” Hidalgo replied, “and I’m not going to hit the bars with Fox News journalists, even the nicest [journalists].”

In multiple broadcasts after the attack last month on the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, Fox News hosts and analysts weaved the no-go zones myth. Fox even aired a map of Paris that purported to outline the forbidden zones in neighborhoods including Belleville, Barbès and Père-Lachaise.

Fox later issued a report, billed as a retraction, saying that “there was no formal designation of these zones”. Fox News did not return a call and email on Thursday seeking comment.

A lawyer for Fox said on Thursday that the lawsuit over the no-go zones was “antithetical to free speech”.

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“Fox News will invoke every protection afforded it under all applicable laws,” lawyer Dori Ann Hanswirth said in a statement.

It appears that Paris would not be able to recoup funds from Fox News in the event of any judgment in its favor, based on a 2010 law that prohibits US courts from enforcing any foreign judgement for defamation except in narrow circumstances.

When Fox was pushing the story hardest, one analyst even said there were Muslim no-go zones in the UK, including the entire city of Birmingham, “where non-Muslims just don’t go”.

British prime minister David Cameron sharply rebuked the analyst, Steven Emerson, for the remark. “When I heard this frankly I choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April Fools’ Day,” Cameron said. “This guy’s clearly a complete idiot.”

As of this writing Britain has not sued.