AI Summary
5 min readIn March 2022, a car carrying a Fox News team near Kyiv, Ukraine was hit by a missile. Two journalists—Pierre Zakrzewski and Sasha Kuvshynova—and two Ukrainian soldiers were killed. Correspondent Benjamin Hall survived but lost a leg, his other foot, and one eye. Two years later, multi-million-dollar lawsuits against Fox News and Hall allege the network failed to keep its journalists safe and that Hall ignored repeated warnings to stay within Kyiv city limits. NPR’s David Folkenflik investigated what happened, conducting 15 interviews and reviewing hundreds of pages of court documents and hours of television coverage.
The reporter and the "big one"
Benjamin Hall came from a family with a history of wartime trauma. He wrote in his memoir that he saw his first man die in Libya in 2011 and chose to keep filming. He freelanced in Iraq, Somalia, and Syria before joining Fox News full-time in 2015. In late 2021, he moved to Washington, D.C. for a safer role covering the State Department. When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, a Fox executive called and asked him to go. Hall’s wife urged him not to. He went anyway.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:05) **Introduction: The Ballroom and the Bombing** - Aisha Roscoe sets up the story at a Fox event two years ago, where war correspondent Benjamin Hall promotes the network's mission. The narrative then pivots to the fatal 2022 attack in Ukraine that killed four people and left Hall severely injured.
- 2 (03:52) **The Core Question: Safety vs. Story** - NPR's David Folkenflik frames the investigation: Did Fox News fail to protect its journalists, and did star correspondent Benjamin Hall ignore safety warnings to chase dramatic war footage?
- 3 (05:24) **Benjamin Hall's Backstory: A Reporter Built for Risk** - Hall's biography reveals a pattern of thrill-seeking and risk-taking in war zones, including a prior formal complaint from a Fox producer alleging reckless behavior.
- 4 (08:05) **The Call to Ukraine: From Desk Job to War Zone** - In February 2022, Hall leaves a safer Washington D.C. role to cover Russia's invasion, despite his wife's pleas and warnings from Fox's own security advisors.
- 5 (10:48) **"The Big One": Hall's Motivation** - Hall articulates his driving ambition: the Ukraine war was the culmination of his career, a world-changing story he could not resist.
- 6 (12:14) **The State of Play: Fox's Imperative for Images** - Veteran news executive John Williams explains the TV news mandate to "get the pictures," setting the stage for the dangerous assignment.
- 7 (14:03) **Sasha Kuvshynova: The Ambitious Fixer** - A portrait of the young Ukrainian fixer, just two months into her job at Fox, who was eager to tell her nation's story to the world.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
NPR’s David Folkenflik brings the in-depth story of a fatal reporting trip near Kyiv, where Hall was gravely wounded and two other Fox News journalists were killed. Now, the journalists’ families are suing Fox, saying the network put the story ahead of its people. One of the lawsuits says Fox gave Hall free rein to push the Fox news team into an area he’d been repeatedly warned was off limits.
You can read more of David Folkenflik’s reporting on this story here.
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