What do the French think about Fox News? Very little, if an international lawsuit threat by the mayor of Paris and the opinions of two French people now living in the U.S. mean anything.
“I will do everything in my power to not watch it,” one Frenchman, who now lives outside of Augusta, Ga., told the Washington Examiner media desk. He declined to have his name published, citing the concern of just having started a new job.
“It is at the gym and every time I watch, I almost trip from the tread mill,” he said.
Relations between the French and Fox News, if there ever were any, hit a low on Tuesday after Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo threatened to sue the network for having “prejudiced” her city. The threat came in response to a spate of claims on Fox last week about “no-go zones” in Paris and across Europe where dense Muslim populations isolate themselves and live according to Sharia Law. French police also stay way from the areas, at least one Fox guest said.
That guest, self-described terrorism expert Steve Emerson, retracted the claim shortly after and corrections were also made by Fox News’s on-air talent. “To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country,” said anchor Julie Banderas in one of the corrections Saturday. She added there’s “no credible information to support the assertion that there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion.”
“It is not the first time that Fox News is exaggerating about their information,” said the Frenchman, revealing a prior bias against Fox.
Still, he said, there is something to the claim that there are parts of France, heavily populated by Muslims, that the mainstream society tend to avoid.
“Officially, it doesn’t exist,” he said in an interview. “There are no places in France where the police are not allowed to go. However, there are places where they know that their presence will cause potential tension. There are places in [the city of] Marseille where cops don’t go because they will get into some problems. But there are no places where Islamic laws prevail.”
Asked to identify specific areas like those he described, the Frenchmen referred to the regions Seine-Saint-Denis and Hauts-de-Seine. He said he had visited Saint-Denis but said it is not known to be as dangerous an area as others.
“It’s not off limits,” he said, rejecting “no-go zone” as an appropriate description. “You can go, I can go. You just don’t know if it’s a good idea. Like, if I go to some neighborhoods in the Bronx for instance.”
The Frenchman’s comments reflect the general tone of a New York Times story published shortly after Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine, had its newsroom shot up by Islamic terrorists. The story referred to dense Muslim populations pocketed in poor neighborhoods across France, whose inhabitants feel isolated and alien from the rest of the country.
“I am French, and I feel French,” 23-year-old Nabil Souidi, who lives in one of the neighborhoods, said in the Times article. “But here you are forbidden to say, ‘I am Charlie,’” the rallying cry for freedom of expression since the attack on the magazine.
Sarah Mazou, who is also French, disputed the idea that Islam had anything to do with neighborhoods in France that most of the French avoid.
“They (people on Fox News) described no-go zones as areas that are occupied by Muslims where no one can go, pretty much,” she said. “So wrong. This is so untrue. These are the dangerous ghettos, nothing to do with Muslims.”
Asked if any of the isolated areas do contain large concentrations of Muslims, however, Mazou, who now lives in Nashville, Tenn., said yes.
“Well, there are but I would not say all of them,” she said. “They are any religion, just people who are excluded and living in poor areas. I’d say Muslims are everywhere in France, really, not only in these areas.”
