French Mayor Anne Hidalgo: City Of Paris To Sue Fox News
Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo has had enough of Fox News.
On Tuesday, Hidalgo told CNN that she intends to sue Fox News over the network’s incorrect coverage of so-called “no-go zones” for non-Muslims, saying that the channel had “insulted her city.”
“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 said. “The image of Paris has been prejudiced, and the honor of Paris has been prejudiced.”
Hidalgo is taking issue over a series of Fox News segments where hosts repeatedly suggested that there are parts of Paris and other cities in Europe where Islamic law supersedes local law, to the point where citizens and police refuse to enter the areas. Fox News refers to those areas as “no-go zones,” but the existence of such neighborhoods has yet to be proven. Critics of the network have accused Fox of using the controversial “no-go zones” in order to advance and perpetuate a narrative about Muslims that is meant to scare viewers, particularly in the days following the tragic terror attack in France.
The segments on “no-go zones” aired by Fox were widely mocked in the global news, and challenged for the inaccuracy, particularly by French media outlets.
After one Fox News guest who was billeted as a “security expert” claimed that Birmingham, England is a “totally Muslim city where non-Muslims don’t go in,” even British Prime Minister David Cameron weighed in on the matter, finding the idea of “no-go zones” to be absurd.
“When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April Fools Day.”
Anne Hidalgo took to Twitter and wrote that she was “shocked by Fox’s stigmatizing error.”
On Saturday, Fox News network issued a total of four separate apologies for four separate stigmatizing inaccuracies in their reporting, all of which involved the still unfounded rumors of so-called Muslim “no-go zones” throughout Europe. For a full list of those inaccuracies, and the apologies that followed, click here.
But apologies are not enough for the French mayor, whose full interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour will be televised on Tuesday.
Fox News representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What do you think? Is the mayor of Paris right in suing Fox News over their repeated use of “no-go zones” in Paris? Or were the apologies issued by Fox sufficient in correcting the errors?
[Image via Reuters]
