Murdoch and Fox News Mocked on Twitter for Claims About Muslims
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Version 0 of 1. This cannot have been an enjoyable weekend for anyone at 21st Century Fox responsible for cultivating the image of either Rupert Murdoch or his Fox News Channel. After Mr. Murdoch posted a message on Twitter late Friday in which he seemed to assign collective blame for the deadly attacks on a satirical newspaper and a kosher market in Paris to all followers of Islam, the social network lit up with criticism and mockery. Then, before that wave of digital outrage had even begun to crest, Steve Emerson, a self-described expert on Islamist terrorism, appeared on Fox News to make the startling and false claim that some parts of Europe — including areas of France, London and the entire English city of Birmingham — “are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.” The population of Birmingham, as a local newspaper pointed out, is in fact just 21.8 percent Muslim, with nearly as many having no religion and more than twice as many Christians, according to recent census figures. As the complete transcript and video of Mr. Emerson’s interview with the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro showed, he also claimed that “no-go zones exist not only in France, but they exist throughout Europe. They’re sort of amorphous, they’re not contiguous necessarily, but they’re sort of safe havens and they’re places where the governments like France, Britain, Sweden, Germany don’t exercise any sovereignty. So you basically have zones where Shariah courts were set up, where Muslim density is very intense, where the police don’t go in, and where it’s basically a separate country almost, a country within a country.” Although Ms. Pirro, a former prosecutor and judge, made no effort to correct Mr. Emerson, he did eventually retract and apologize for his false claims, after enduring about 22 hours of online mockery from Britons who shared a series of absurd falsehoods about their nation tagged #FoxNewsFacts. On Sunday, Mr. Murdoch, who had been similarly battered for his punditry, joined those praising Ahmed Merabet, the French police officer who was killed on camera by the French militants linked to Al Qaeda in Yemen who carried out the deadly assault on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly that had printed cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. This is not the first time Mr. Murdoch’s tweeting has led to accusations of racism or xenophobia. As Geoffrey Wheatcroft observed in The New York Review of Books last month, “what might be politely called his increasing eccentricity is magnified by his addiction to Twitter — that device helpfully enabling people to write faster than they can think — with such effusions as ‘Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti Israel in every crisis?’ or ‘Moses film attacked on Twitter for all white cast. Since when are Egyptians not white? All I know are.’ ” As for Mr. Emerson, who was called “a complete idiot” by Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday, some observers with long memories suggested it would be unwise to dismiss him so lightly. Andrew Exum, a former special adviser for Middle East policy at the Pentagon, pointed to a 2010 report in The Tennessean, which described Mr. Emerson as “a leading member of a multimillion-dollar industry of self-proclaimed experts who spread hate toward Muslims in books and movies, on websites and through speaking appearances.” Eric Boehlert, who has tracked Mr. Emerson’s career for Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog group, explained in a 2002 report for Salon that Mr. Emerson had been alternately celebrated and shunned by news producers in the United States. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Emerson was called “a writer and commentator on terrorism who has long pressed Washington to crack down on this charity and other Islamic nonprofit groups that he says support terrorism,” in a New York Times report by Judith Miller and Kurt Eichenwald. Laura Rozen, a journalist who reports on Washington, foreign policy and the Middle East, noted that Connie Bruck reported in The New Yorker that Mr. Emerson had introduced Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire donor to conservative causes, and his wife, Miriam, as his generous supporters at a fund-raising event for a film he wanted to make in 2008. |