Mockery is a national weapon in France, so when a US cable news channel raised false alarms about rampant lawlessness in some Paris neighborhoods — proclaiming them “no-go zones” for non-Muslims, avoided even by the police — a popular French television show rebutted the claims the way it best knew how: with satire, spoofs, and a campaign of exaggeration and sarcasm.
The show Le Petit Journal is a French version of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart — irreverent and reliant on mock correspondents who showcase the foibles of the high and mighty.
Usually Le Petit Journal reserves its venom for French politicians and the local news media, but in the days after the terrorist attacks in Paris that left 17 dead, including 12 people at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, it set its sights on a transatlantic target, Fox News, after the channel claimed that swaths of England and France were ruled according to Shariah law.
Photo: Reuters
“They did this on a weekend when all France and Paris was in a state of shock,” said Yann Barthes, 40, who has hosted the show since it began in 2004. “I cried.”
However, he said it was also “irritating, so we chose humor to campaign against Fox News. It’s more effective than being upset.”
On Saturday, Fox News apologized four times on the air for its reports about the no-go zones, acknowledging that there was no reason to believe that they existed. It called the reports an “error” and apologized to “any and all,” including “the people of France.”
Photo: EPA
It is hard to say whether the apologies were the result of Le Petit Journal’s mockery, a campaign instigated by the program to inundate Fox News with e-mails or Fox News’ realization that its reporting, which reinforced a popular conservative warning about a purported spread of Shariah in the Western world, was wrong.
In a statement on Monday, Michael Clemente, an executive vice president at the network, said: “We issued a correction and apology across several platforms, so that any viewers who may have tuned in to the earlier programming would have a chance to hear our corrected reporting.”
Before the apologies, Barthes and his “correspondents” hounded Fox News, which is not widely available on French television.
Barthes’ show, which has about 3 million viewers and follows in the satirical tradition of Charlie Hebdo, but in a much gentler style, showed generous portions of the Fox clips where the no-go zones were discussed, providing French translations.
Their comics confronted Fox News correspondents when they spotted them reporting live in Paris.
In one video, two of the show’s correspondents pretended to be US journalists venturing into supposedly forbidden areas and, in slapstick fashion, cowering by a Turkish kebab shop and a couscous restaurant, falling to the ground at the sound of a jackhammer.
Representatives of Le Petit Journal also showed up at the New York offices of Fox News on Thursday last week to seek comment from executives there, Barthes said, until security turned them away.
Barthes said that his show was unable to obtain any response from Fox News, so he turned to his viewers for help, giving the e-mail addresses of Fox executives. When the show posted the information on Twitter, he said, they had 7,000 retweets in five minutes.
The theme was picked up by others on social media, who expressed mock horror at the “danger” in Paris. A food guide site mapped the best places to dine in the so-called lawless zones, including a bakery where the owner had won awards for baguettes.
The commotion began this month when Steve Emerson, identified as a terrorism expert, told host Sean Hannity “there are no-go zones” throughout Europe ruled by Muslims.
He then elaborated in an interview with another Fox host, Jeanine Pirro, claiming that the entire city of Birmingham, England, was a place where “non-Muslims simply don’t go in.”
On the day the Charlie Hebdo attackers were killed, Nolan Peterson, who on his Web site describes himself as a freelance writer and a combat veteran, went on Fox News and identified what he called 741 Muslim-dominated “no-go zones” around France, saying the areas reminded him of his time in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Even the British Prime Minister David Cameron reacted to the Birmingham claim, saying: “When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my porridge.”
He called Emerson “an idiot.”
Muslim leaders say that Muslims are often the victims of attacks, especially since the Paris killings, which were carried out by militants. The head of a French organization known as the National Observatory Against Islamophobia called for protection by the state, saying there had been “116 anti-Muslim acts, including 28 incidents at mosques and 88 threats,” in the two days after the Jan. 7 shootings.
Fox was abject in its apologies, as was Emerson.
Julie Banderas, a Fox anchor, said 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.”
“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 said. “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.”
Apologies were issued on-air three other times.
Carly Shanahan, a spokeswoman for Fox News in New York, said the communications office never received a query by telephone or e-mail from Le Petit Journal.
Barthes said the show had made repeated attempts, including his own e-mails.
Barthes said he was not sure whether his show could take credit for the apologies, but on Monday the show devoted one more night to Fox News, starting with a dissection of the various apologies.
“The important thing is that we really had fun,” Barthes said. “It’s important for the French audience to know about this. They don’t really know Fox News and they think it’s an enormous channel, very American, with announcers with big voices and blonde women who look like Barbies.”
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