CNN Relied On Muslim ‘No-Go Zone’ Myth And Hasn’t Corrected It

Much hay has been made this week over Fox News’ disavowal of the term “no-go zones,” which alleges that some neighborhoods of European cities are ruled by Sharia law and off-limits to local police. CNN’s resident media critic Brian Stelter noted that Fox apologized last weekend for four separate errors involving Muslims and “no-go zones.”

But as the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple detailed on Tuesday, CNN aired some chatter about “no-go zones” earlier this month in the immediate aftermath of the Paris terror attacks. TPM also found other examples.

Stelter acknowledged Wednesday that the network had used the term before.

“This idea of ‘no-go zones’ has been largely discredited, but it has been popular in right-wing media,” Stelter said on the CNN show “New Day.” “Sometimes, you hear it brought up on CNN as well and elsewhere. It’s a topic that deserves more reporting.”

“It raises the issue of what is an expert,” co-anchor Chris Cuomo chimed in. “And also, what happened in France? They did have riots there that were a function of the Muslim ghettos, the underserved communities, feeling that there was no connection there, the police shouldn’t have been there. They’re not ‘no-go zones,’ but they did have that problem.”

That important distinction is one CNN didn’t always make after a three-day manhunt ended in the death of Charlie Hebdo attackers Cherif and Said Kouachi and their associate, Amedy Coulibaly, who had taken hostages in a kosher market.

Wemple noted that on the Jan. 9 edition of “Anderson Cooper 360,” hours after those three Paris attackers had been killed in nearly simultaneous police raids, former CIA officer Gary Berntsen told host Anderson Cooper that both France and Sweden have “no-go zones” where police “don’t go in.”

“You know, fire fighters or ambulance drivers go in there and they’re attacked,” Berntsen said. “Their vehicles are lit on fire, their tires are slashed, and the Europeans have not pushed back against this … And so, consequentially, you have, you know hundreds of thousands people living in areas on enclaves that are completely separated from the government. The government has no control of them and then they can walk out of that ‘no-go zone’ and do an attack.”

A Nexis search by TPM showed that later during the same program, senior Brookings Institute fellow Jonathan Laurence pushed back against the “no-go zone” narrative.

“We have seen in a number of Western European countries, new immigrants particularly from Muslim countries not making as much effort to assimilate into the larger population,” Cooper said. “We’ve seen that in Sweden, obviously in England, here in France and as one of the guests earlier was talking about, there are kind of no go-zones where police don’t even really go into and again it does cut both ways.”

“Well, I think we have to distinguish between ethic enclaves on the one hand, we’re familiar with those from the United States, Little Italy and Chinatown and ‘no-go zones’ on the other which has to do with the rule of law actually stopping at the boarders of certain neighborhoods,” Laurence countered. “Those are very different.”

Then on the Jan. 10 edition of “CNN Newsroom,” retired NYPD detective Harry Houck said that those so-called “no-go zones,” which he said were facilitated by the French government, would foment all-out anarchy.

“The French government has created an environment in these certain neighborhoods where they don’t allow local law enforcement to come in,” Houck said. “All right? And by doing that, alright, not only do they follow some of their own Sharia law in these locations, these ‘no-go zones’ in France. So what happens is, if we can’t get local law enforcement in there and they have their own law they follow, then we could wind up having anarchy in France.”

Wemple also noted that retired Major General James “Spider” Marks brought up “no-go zones” on that same program, stating that “the police have chosen not to penetrate” those areas and adding that “there has been an open effort to keep them isolated.” Marks said those areas were not legally designated as no-go zones, though.

But by the time Fox began apologizing Saturday for its guests’ use of the term, CNN had already moved past it.

A Nexis search showed that CNN’s next mention of “no-go zones” was Sunday, when host Fareed Zakaria asked The Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders to weigh in on the claim that police aren’t allowed into those areas.

“This is the sort of urban myth that could only occur from somebody who hasn’t spent much time in these cities or in the immigrant districts of these cities,” Saunders responded. “There are poor neighborhoods in European cities, some of which have crime problems and so on. There is not a single one that anybody could describe as a no-go zone by the police or by anyone. Not in east London, not in Brussels, not in Sweden or anything.”

A CNN spokeswoman did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment.