In an unusual move, Fox News – the American news channel notorious for its biased reporting – has apologised for airing false claims on its shows that there are Muslim-only “no-go zones” in England and France.
Fox Report host Julie Banderas apologised for the errors during her show on Saturday. “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 said.
“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,” Banderas added.
The anchor further clarified there are no formal designations 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.”Last week, terror “expert” Steve Emerson told the 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.”
The claims attracted widespread attention as people took to social networking site, Twitter, to express their outrage and disbelief at his ignorance.
Emerson said such areas also included parts of London, Sweden and Germany, and he claimed, “You basically have zones where Sharia 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.”
“In Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in,” Emerson claimed.
“And, parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police that actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn’t dress according to religious Muslim attire,” he added.
The host Jeanine Pirro apologised sincerely to the people of the city and said that “expert” Steve Emerson’s “serious factual error” should not have gone unchallenged.
“We could find no credible sources that indicate that Birmingham is a so-called ‘no go zone’. We deeply regret these errors and apologise to the people of Birmingham, our viewers and all who have been offended,” Pirro said.
According to the New York Times, the broader apology on Saturday, read by Banderas, came after a week of pressure from a French television host, Yann Barthès, whose comedic news program Le Petit Journal, found examples of the claim being repeated by anchors and guests on other Fox News programmes.
Barthès even sent a crew to several areas of Paris identified on a map by Fox as “no-go zones” to ask residents if their neighborhoods really did resemble Iraq and Afghanistan.