Fox News wanted war images in Ukraine - their journalists died

Up First from NPR

This episode investigates the tragic March 2022 missile attack near Kyiv that left Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall severely injured and killed two colleagues, Pierre Zakrzewski and Sasha Kuvshnova. Through

Key takeaways

• Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall was gravely wounded in a missile strike near Kyiv on March 14, 2022, losing his right leg below the knee and an eye.
• High-risk security advisor Shane Thompson alleges he repeatedly warned against traveling to the Irpin suburbs, which were deemed a 'no-go area' by Ukrainian troops and local officials.

Main topics

• War zone journalism safety protocols
• Fox News corporate liability and crisis management

Notable quotes

"These stories, they need eyes on the ground. They need a human perspective. They need us to bear witness."

Conclusion

The episode underscores the profound ethical and operational dilemmas n

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is The Sunday Story. Speaker 1 (0:04) Let's go back to an event two years ago in a fancy ballroom in midtown Manhattan. Speaker 1 (0:11) It's staged by the media giant Fox. Speaker 1 (0:15) Stars take turns promoting Fox's brands, including Fox News. Speaker 4 (0:21) It's my honor to introduce Mr. Benjamin Hall. Speaker 1 (0:25) War correspondent Benjamin Hall sets out a rousing mission for the network. Speaker 8 (0:30) From Ukraine to the Middle East and here at home, the dedicated journalists at Fox News are trying to inform America, even in the most perilous of circumstances. Speaker 1 (0:43) Paul knows peril all too well. In March 2022, while in Ukraine covering the war with Russia, the car he was traveling in was blown up. Paul lost a leg, his other foot, and one of his eyes. And so at this event for hundreds of industry executives, Hall stands on prosthetics in a suit that ends just above his knees. Speaker 8 (1:09) These stories, they need eyes on the ground. They need a human perspective. They need us to bear witness. Speaker 1 (1:16) Though gravely injured on that day in March 2022, Hall was the lucky one. Four people in the car with him. two military escorts and two other journalists were killed. Now, two multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the network are blaming Fox News for what happened. One of the lawsuits also places the blame on Star Fox correspondent Benjamin Hall. Today on The Sunday Story, David Falkenflik brings us his investigation into what went catastrophically wrong on the outskirts of Kiev. Speaker 1 (1:55) We'll be right back. Speaker 4 (1:57) This message comes from NPR sponsor, the NPR Wine Club, a place to find boutique wines from around the world and bottles inspired by popular NPR shows, as well as to explore the producers, regions, and exciting stories that bring each selection to life. Whether you buy a few bottles or join the club, all purchases support NPR programming and help fund quality reporting. You can learn more at nprwineclub.org. Must be 21 or older to purchase. We the people make a free press possible. Together we hold power to account with reporting for the public, funded by the public. It takes all of us to protect the future of public media. Make your gift now at donate.npr.org. Speaker 1 (2:42) In a war zone, reporting is a deadly gamble where you have to balance risk and reward. For one Fox News reporter, that calculation ended in tragedy. Speaker 7 (2:52) The home person would have been injured. Speaker 7 (2:56) the advisory. Speaker 1 (2:57) Who's responsible for setting limits on reporting in a war zone when lives are on the line? Listen now to the Sunday story from the Up First podcast on the NPR app. Speaker 1 (3:08) We're back with the Sunday story. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I'm handing things off to NPR's David Fokenflik, who brings us this exclusive story about a fatal assignment in covering the war in Ukraine. A warning, the following material involves graphic language about injury and death. It also contains a mention of suicide. Here's David Fokenflik. Speaker 2 (3:32) Fox News gets accused of a lot of things, in headlines and in court. Typically, those accusations have to do with its right-wing ideology, the political agenda of its founder, Rupert Murdoch, and its pursuit of profits. In the story I'm about to tell you, the questions are different. They center on whether the network did enough to keep its own journalists safe while covering combat, and whether Fox gave one of its star correspondents free reign to ignore warnings. as he sought to get images of Russia's bloody invasion of Ukraine. The correspondent's name is Benjamin Speaker 6 (4:05) Hall. Hall was known throughout his career for taking risks in pursuit of a story, but he'd also been accused of going too far. Such allegations resurfaced in Ukraine. Speaker 6 (4:17) Aaron King was one of Hall's colleagues at the time. Speaker 7 (4:20) None of this would have happened. Speaker 6 (4:21) King was a high-risk security advisor for Fox in Ukraine, meaning he was paid to keep people safe. Speaker 7 (4:27) Not one person would have been injured if Benji had... Speaker 7 (4:35) place or however it Fox Speaker 2 (4:37) did not comment for this story, and it did not make Benjamin Hall available to offer his side of matters. Speaker 6 (4:43) In Speaker 2 (4:43) order to report on it, I Speaker 6 (4:44) conducted 15 interviews, reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents, and hours of television coverage. I also paid close attention to Hall's own words. He appeared on TV, of course, but he also presented his story in a Fox documentary and in his own memoir. Both came out in March 2023, a year after the fatal incident. So, what is Benjamin Hall's story? Speaker 2 (5:08) Benjamin Hall comes from a globetrotting family with roots in Britain, the U.S., and the Philippines. During World War II, Japanese forces in the Philippines imprisoned his Speaker 6 (5:17) grandfather and executed his grandmother and other relatives. U.S. troops rescued Hall's father, just a boy, during the fighting Speaker 2 (5:25) there. In his 20s, Hall wrote freelance articles from hotspots around the world. Here Hall is reading from his memoir, titled Saved. I saw a lot of death, had guns Speaker 8 (5:35) pressed against my head, dreamed horrific dreams. All of it an echo Speaker 2 (5:39) of what my father endured in Manila. Hall says in his memoir that the first time he saw a man dying was in 2011, during a period of intense fighting in Libya. Hall writes he was confronted with a choice. Speaker 6 (5:52) Should he invade the dignity of the man's last moments? Speaker 8 (5:55) I didn't have the time to consider all the moral angles. I could either keep filming or stop filming. And I chose to keep filming. Speaker 4 (6:03) When I met Benji, he was a freelancer. Speaker 2 (6:06) This is Hall's wife, Alicia Mellor, from Sacrifice and Survival, a Fox News documentary about her husband. Speaker 4 (6:12) I knew he did dangerous things occasionally or a lot, but it didn't really matter. He loved what he did. Speaker 2 (6:20) And Hall kept doing it in Iraq, Somalia, Syria. He is a man with previous war zone experience all around the world. Here's Fox foreign correspondent Trey Yinkst speaking about his admiration for Hall on Fox News Radio. His reporting in Syria before he even started at Fox was the gold standard. And yet there had been at least one red flag. Speaker 2 (6:44) During Hall's freelance days, a Fox News producer filed a formal complaint saying Hall had endangered colleagues to further his own career. The producer, Phil Itner, Speaker 6 (6:55) later set out his allegations in a sworn affidavit reviewed by NPR. He accused Hall of being, quote, addicted to the adrenaline rush of taking risks and alleged that Hall took what Itner called, quote, ad lib, unplanned and reckless actions without proper intelligence and vetting to chase a story. He alleged that Hall pumped up stories in hopes of becoming a host for Fox in New York. Itner urged Fox to pull Hall, saying he was unfit to report for the network. In the affidavit, Speaker 2 (7:25) Itner said he never heard back about his complaint. In 2015, Hall joined Fox News full-time as a London-based foreign correspondent, and he married Mellor. Then, in late 2021, they moved to Washington, D.C. Hall would cover the U.S. State Department. It was to be a more stable and safer role. That new path lasted just four months. On February 24, 2022, Ukraine came under attack. Russia began a full-scale military assault. Speaker 6 (7:57) Hall got the call from a Fox executive. Will you go to Ukraine to cover the war? By this time, Hall and Mellor had three daughters together. Speaker 8 (8:05) I understood my obligations to Alicia and my family, and I knew I had to stop putting myself in dangerous situations. And yet, he Speaker 2 (8:12) didn't blink. Speaker 2 (8:15) Just four days after the Russians invaded, Hall arrived in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, several hundred miles west of the major action. Hall started hosting a show that aired nightly on Fox, reporting on the rising tensions. Speaker 8 (8:29) It is a difficult moment in this war between Russia and Ukraine. Speaker 2 (8:33) But very quickly, news executives asked, could he go to Kiev? Fox had pulled most of its journalists from the capital city because of mounting danger. Hall writes that his wife urged him not to go. Hall assured her he'd be fine. Fox did have a team of high-risk security contractors to keep its journalists safe. Such security advisors are typically ex-military. They provide guidance, muscle, and medical aid. They can also serve as a break on journalists who put their hunger for a story ahead of their own well-being. Speaker 6 (9:05) This can create tension. Aaron King was one of those Fox high-risk advisors. He says that, like Hall's wife and like another Fox safety contractor, he told Hall not to go to Kiev. Speaker