A memo sent to Fox News employees from Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott on Monday described how Fox journalist Benjamin hall was injured while reporting in Ukraine. The memo said that details were scarce but that Ben was hospitalized.
Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Reveals Benjamin Hall’s Injuries
Business Insider reported that Ukrainian Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova released some details of the injury, announcing on Facebook that an American journalist had been left with two broken legs and was admitted to an intensive care unit to be monitored. While Venediktova didn’t release the journalist’s name, she did share an image of the press badge of the journalist which indicated it was a Fox News reporter.
“A citizen of your country was on the territory of Ukraine performing an editorial task,” she wrote. “This man was not at the military facility, which according to Russian officials, they are constantly targeting. He was seriously wounded while not at the military facility.”
Fox News host John Roberts confirmed that Hall was injured while reporting on the Ukraine conflict during a live broadcast.
“And this is news that we hate to pass along to you but it’s obviously what happens sometimes in the middle of a conflict, a Fox News journalist has been injured while newsgathering outside of Kiev,” he said.
“Very few details but teams on the ground are working as hard as they can to try to gather more information. A reminder, of course, that this, in a war zone, information changes very quickly and we are working as hard as possible to get the best information that we possibly can.”
He added that the safety of Fox journalists is of the “utmost importance.”
Russia Committing War Crimes?
The news of Hall’s injuries comes just a day after the Ukrainian police announced that an American video journalist, Brent Renaud, was killed while reporting in the Irpin suburb of Kiev. Ukraine’s capital city has been under siege since early May. Russian forces have been unable to successfully take the capital city yet, but a 40-mile-long convoy of Russian tanks, artillery, and armored vehicles began to disperse around the city over the last few days.
Russian forces have surrounded the city and continued a brutal bombardment of the city on Monday even as peace talks restarted.
Renaud was reportedly working on a film about refugees for Time magazine. He was initially identified as a New York Times employee, but the Times later revealed that the badge he was wearing was issued to him for a previous assignment before 2015.
On Monday, British Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab met with the International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim AA Khan QC to offer support for an investigation into possible war crimes committed by the Russian military. Plans have been drawn up to bring together a coalition of countries to initiate war crimes investigations into Russia after reports revealed that civilian buildings and hospitals have been targeted and destroyed by Russian missiles in recent weeks.
Gil Klein, the president of the National Press Club Journalism Institute, also issued a statement with Jen Judson, the president of the National Press Club, arguing that the killing of Brent Renaud was potentially a war crime.
“That so many journalists — local and foreign, freelancer and staffer are putting their health, lives and livelihoods on the line in order to cover the human costs of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a reminder to the world of why a free and independent press is so important and worthy of protection and support. Under international humanitarian law, journalists are noncombatants. We call for an investigation into the killing of Brent Renaud as a possible war crime,” the statement reads.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and report on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
