Fox News Sued Over Producer's Death in Ukraine — SkimNews
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Oleksandra "Sasha" Kuvshynova, 24, was killed in a Russian strike outside Kyiv in the opening weeks of the 2022 invasion, along with videographer Pierre Zakrzewski and two Ukrainian soldier-guides, while working as Fox News's newest producer and interpreter
- Kuvshynova's parents filed a multimillion-dollar wrongful death lawsuit against Fox News and Benjamin Hall alleging "ambition and negligence"; their lawyer Stephen Humphreys says Fox was given specific warnings about the exact time and place of the danger
- Security adviser Aaron King told NPR he warned Hall not to go to Kyiv, asking what Hall thought he could achieve that other teams hadn't; Hall, per King, "shrugged his shoulders" and went anyway
- Benjamin Hall survived the strike but lost his right leg below the knee, most of his left foot, and part of an eye; in his memoir "Saved" he wrote he had learned to "control my fear" and "bury it, and keep moving forward into danger"
- Former Fox international producer Phil Ittner said in a sworn affidavit he had previously filed a formal internal complaint that Hall's behavior in Syria endangered colleagues and urged Fox to pull him from the field, with no known response or consequences from the network
- Fox News declined NPR's detailed requests for comment and pointed to a March 2024 statement calling the lawsuit's claims "inaccurate" and reiterating that "the safety of our journalists has always been our number one priority"
Why it matters: The suit puts a spotlight on the trade-off networks make between competitive war coverage and crew safety, with two contractors and a prior internal complaint suggesting warnings were ignored more than once. If the case advances past Fox's legal challenges, it could expose internal decision-making about combat-zone risk and establish new financial liability for networks whose journalists are killed abroad.
Ask SkimNews
