"City of Blacks": Barely elected, the mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko, falls victim to racist fake news on TV.

He said "city of kings and the living people." The far right heard "city of blacks." A racist fake news story targeting Bally Bagayoko, the new La France Insoumise mayor of Saint-Denis, spread to the studios of BFMTV and France 5 before denials and apologies were issued, once the damage was done.

He never uttered those words. But he was still questioned about them. On Tuesday morning, BFM TV journalist Apolline de Malherbe interviewed Bally Bagayoko, who had been elected mayor of Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) in the first round two days earlier. The newly elected mayor, a member of La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), whom many viewers were just discovering, was questioned about words he had supposedly uttered on LCI on the evening of his election.

Let's rewind. Newly elected, Bally Bagayoko was a guest of Darius Rochebin on LCI's special edition Sunday evening. The journalist immediately drew a comparison, reminding viewers that Saint-Denis is historically "the city of kings," referring in particular to its basilica where many French kings are buried, and that "it is also a city with a large immigrant population."

Bally Bagayoko, struggling to answer clearly, continues, addressing the journalist. “The kings, the city of kings…” he replies. “The city of kings and the living people,” he manages to pronounce audibly. A reference to a phrase by the communist poet and resistance fighter Jean Marcenac, who described Saint-Denis as “the city of the dead king and the living people.”

However, some people chose to listen only to what they wanted to hear and didn't hesitate to spread a purely racist fake news story, claiming that Bally Bagayoko, mayor of the second largest city in the Île-de-France region, had referred to his municipality as "the city of blacks." Words that the mayor never actually uttered.

Fake news on BFMTV and France 5

From Jean Messiah to the far-right website Boulevard Voltaire, and including Gilbert Collard, many have unleashed a torrent of posts on X to spread the fake news, which has even reached television studios. On Monday evening, Alexandre Devecchio, editor-in-chief of the opinion pages of Le Figaro, shared it on the set of C ce soir on France 5.

The following morning, Bally Bagayoko was invited by Apolline de Malherbe on BFMTV. After a question about the expression "New France," the journalist asked Bally Bagayoko: "You said, 'It's also the city of blacks.' Does that matter to you?"

To which the new mayor of Saint-Denis responds with Olympian calm. "It is not the city of blacks. It is the city of kings and of the living people. That is the full term that has been recalled," he emphasizes.

A few hours later, Apolline de Malherbe apologized for spreading this fake news. "In the hubbub of the live broadcast, I misheard her remarks Sunday night at midnight, and I'm sorry. Her exact words were 'city of kings and the living people.' She had the opportunity to say it this morning on my microphone," she wrote on X. "Good to know!! Thank you for the clarification," the mayor replied.

For his part, Alexandre Devecchio also acknowledged that the phrase "city of blacks" had never been uttered. "A second video has allowed us to establish his true words. All the better," he wrote, while the host of C ce soir, Karim Rissouli, revisited the incident that took place on his show.

“That sentence was never uttered. (…) I didn’t know it when it was discussed on the set, so I couldn’t correct it. So the least I can do is correct it now, in front of you, and apologize, because it’s not normal for that kind of talk to be made,” he explained, his tone serious, in a long video posted on Instagram.

“There has been a very, very strong violence since Sunday evening in the media noise and media treatment surrounding this alleged sequence on LCI. There is a form of unacknowledged racism. Because if Bally Bagayoko was not black, no one would have imagined that he could have said Now Saint-Denis is the city of blacks,” he continues.

And to conclude: "It still speaks to the responsibility that is ours, as journalists, not to be misled, manipulated and to (...) correct errors when false statements are made."

A petition to support Bally Bagayoko

Since then, several political figures have denounced the racist attacks and insinuations that Bally Bagayoko has faced. This is the case in particular for many figures from La France Insoumise, but also for the Socialist president of the Seine-Saint-Denis department, Stéphane Troussel, and the first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure.

Also, "national education staff in the city" of Saint-Denis have launched a petition in support of Bally Bagayoko "in the face of the racist media offensive he has been subjected to since his election", AFP reports.

Denouncing remarks made during the campaign by outgoing mayor Mathieu Hanotin, who claimed that drug traffickers were campaigning for his opponent, the signatories deplore the fact that these remarks were repeated "without any caution" by Tugdual Denis, editor-in-chief of Valeurs actuelles, on BFMTV and RMC on Tuesday. Following Mathieu Hanotin's comments, Bally Bagayoko filed a complaint against his now-predecessor.