It’s been a rough year for Fox News State Department correspondent Benjamin Hall. The longtime reporter was catastrophically injured in Ukraine while reporting there in the spring, and two of his colleagues Pierre Zakrzewski and Oleksandra Kuvshynova were killed in the attack. Hall survived and is on the long road the recovery.
Hall and Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd were recognized by The Association and Club of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States on Thursday evening as 2022 Foreign Press Awardees.
Fox News President and Executive Editor Jay Wallace accepted Hall’s award on his behalf at the organization’s gala Thursday evening in New York. Wallace also recognized Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova in his remarks. He also gave a shout out to multiple Biden administration officials who helped get Hall get out of the region and into the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.
“Ben sends his best wishes. He hopes to be here next year. His recovery is going amazingly well,” Wallace told the audience. “But just a reminder to you, young journalists, these are hard jobs. I hope you never have to receive a call like a couple of us received back in March…and just a reminder, the divisions that go on in this country, I do have to thank Secretary [Lloyd] Austin, John Kirby, Antony Blinken, if it wasn’t for them once Ben was injured, catastrophically injured and we didn’t think Ben would make it,’ Wallace added.
“We were in contact with the State Department and the D.O.D. There was nothing the United States could do that day. They said, until you can get him to Poland, there is nothing we can do. This is a war that’s going on, we are there protecting the Ukrainians as best we can with weapons, but we cannot send bodies in there. So, our job was to find someone and we found a couple of angels to get Ben to the border. His story will be told countless times at some point, but he was able to get to the border. The United States was right there ready to grab him. They put him on a C-17, got him to Landstuhl there. He underwent many, many surgeries. Then he came to BAMC [Brooke Army Medical Center], which is in San Antonio, where he has undergone many, many more surgeries. This man has been driven beyond belief by his three daughters and beautiful wife.”
Hall could not make it to Thursday night’s event, and provided a taped message:
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for this award tonight. I do think that this is not just an award for myself. It is an award for Pierre and for Sasha, who both died during that attack and also for every other war correspondent who has been injured or killed covering conflicts. And despite the attack, despite what happened to us, I think it is essential that people continue telling the news, telling the stories from war. I think that that’s the only way we truly get to understand the atrocities, the disasters and the horror that’s happening out there. And only then perhaps can good things can change come from it. And this is also about celebrating the people who came in to get me and to save me, the people who put me back together, who built me despite all my injuries. And when I look at all those people and what they did and I’m reminded of how much good there is in the world, there was evil there in Ukraine that hurt so many people. But there is good and there is more good than there is evil. And we have to continue trying to fight to get that news out as well. People are knocked down. I myself was knocked down. But I know for certain now that you can pick yourself up again and you can try even harder to do what is so important, to keep telling the truth, to keep telling the stories and encouraging everyone else to do the same. Many thanks.”