French satirical TV show Le Petit Journal has hit back at Fox News after a guest on the channel claimed there were “no-go” zones for non-Muslims in France where one could observe men wearing “Bin Laden T-shirts”, reports i100.
In an echo of Steve Emerson’s much-mocked claim that Birmingham was an exclusively Muslim area, when journalist Nolan Peterson appeared on Fox he said of some areas of France: "I’ve been to Afghanistan and Iraq and Kashmir, India, and at times, it felt like that, those places in these no-go zones."
In the same segment, Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck also cited a widely debunked poll which claimed 16 per cent of French people supports Islamic State.
In response to the claims, Le Petit Journal sent reporters to actually visit the “zones”, asking several people how they compared to Iraq and Afghanistan, if they had ever seen anyone in a Bin Laden T-shirt there, and what the area was like.
The show’s host Yann Barthès also noted the map used by Fox was taken from the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, and the areas were urban zones identified for social development rather than “no-go zones”. “It has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with security, religion or whatever bullshit Fox says.”
See more of this report, with Le Petit Journal video, from i100.