Two Fox News interviews about about Muslim “no-go-zones” that aired last January violated U.K. broadcast laws, the country’s communications regulator ruled Monday.
Fox News was found in breach of British broadcast code that says, “Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience.”
Additionally the agency — the Office of Communications or “Ofcom,” for short — said the apologies Fox aired after the fact did not do enough to mitigate “materially misleading statements and the potential harm and offence caused to viewers.”
The Ofcom investigation looked at segments featured in the Jan. 11 episode of “Justice with Jeanine Pirro,” which aired in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo. During the interviews one guest, Nolan Peterson suggested that there Muslim “no-go-zones” in Paris “that the French authorities have abandoned,” the Ofcom report said. In the other interview, Steve Emerson said that there were European towns, namely Birmingham, “that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in,” according to the Ofcom report.
In its decision Ofcom noted that the guests that had been brought on had been presented as experts and had appeared on the show previously. Peterson was labeled “an expert on the radicalisation of the French Muslims,” and Steve Emerson is the founder of the Investigative Project, according to the Ofcom report.
Furthermore, Ofcom noted, the host Jeanine Pirro, a former prosecutor, introduced the topic of no-go-zones and “asked Mr Peterson and Mr Emerson leading questions which, in Ofcom’s view, encouraged the discussion of no-go zones and led to further misstatements about Paris and Birmingham.”
Fox News broadcast apologies for the statements a week after the original airdate, both on “Justice with Jeanine Pirro” and “Fox Report Weekend,” the Ofcom report noted.
However, considering how delayed those apologies were, Ofcom said they were not enough.
“Critically, our concerns stemmed from the fact that the statements were made in a current affairs programme which dealt with a controversial subject matter at an extremely sensitive time following the Hebdo Attack and subsequent incidents,” Ofcom said. “For these reasons, we did not consider that the apologies and corrections sufficiently mitigated the materially misleading statements and the potential harm and offence caused to viewers of the Programme.”
Too bad our FCC isn’t quite as pro-active when dealing with BS masquerading as “news.”
Great. So are they going to sanction Fox or just wag their finger at them?
Good question. Lets see it is run by R. Murdock, owned by R. Murdock. I would guess a small, side to side wag for about a second or maybe two.
Are theh talking about the ‘no go’ zones where the man was beaten by an immigrant gang in England last week? How about the years long Brighton prostitution ring? Or the French women attacked within sight of the Tower for wearing bikinis? Or the Pakistani infested block in London just north of our English office, where we couldn’t travel through to the Pub on the far side, a favorite of the English workers? Or perhaps the places natives have begun to forget are theirs?
There are no real “mad” men on the cable TV show “Mad Men”, just as there is no real “news” on the cable TV show “Fox News.”
Calling a duck a chair doesn’t make it a chair.