In the last two weeks, three news correspondents were killed and two were injured as they covered the conflict in Ukraine. The latest causalities worked for Fox News: Cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski, consultant Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, and reporter Bill Hall. Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova were killed and Bill Hall was seriously injured on Monday. On Tuesday, the Fox News show “The Five” paid tribute to them.
Co-host Geraldo Rivera began strong, saying: “Putin is the devil. He is a war criminal. His invasion of his neighboring sovereign nation is as barbaric as it is unjustified…”
Rivera continued, “…and now his brutality has struck the Fox News family, and the team led by our correspondent Benjamin Hall who was attacked, grievously wounding the correspondent, the person you see there in the foreground.”
Co-host Greg Gutfeld recalled a recent argument he had with Hall:
“The thing that pisses me off is that he is handsome and he is funny and we joked about what went on on The Five,” Gutfeld said, referring to Hall’s taking issue with him after he suggested the media was pushing an “emotional response” to war.
Hall pushed back publicly, but Gutfeld suggested they worked through what he referred to as a “Little kerfuffle.”
“I won’t say what we talked about because frankly it is nobody’s business but he did say something that I agreed with 100%. And he said, Greg, ‘you can’t do my job, and I can’t do yours.’ And I said, ‘duh, my job is way easier,'” Gutfeld said.
Adding a little levity, Gutfeld added, “I do get death threats but they are usually from Dana, on pink stationery.”
Quickly turning serious, Gutfeld said, “But we can afford to pontificate because we are thousands of miles away. They can’t afford to pontificate at all because they are always in danger.”
“As Geraldo said, war is the worst thing you can imagine. That is what we do here. We imagine. But what Ben and his coworkers do, they don’t imagine it, they actually see it.”
Gutfeld continued: “Which is why when I am sitting here, for me, I must be as anti-war as possible until I can no longer be anti-war because it’s like those TV hosts that were telling you to stay home indefinitely during Covid because they still worked, they still got their paychecks; they got the camera crew coming to their house.”
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Commending courage and cursing the scourge of war Gutfeld said:
“They were divorced from their consequences. That was the same thing here. It is easy to talk about war at home. As Geraldo said, it is not romantic.”
“But since I’m not going anywhere near the war, I am sure as hell not going to tell a single person to go there and die in a foreign country. I learned that lesson with Iraq and I am never going to go through that again.”
Gutfeld concluded:
“Ben’s job is to go there and delineate the truth through imagery. It is harder to do now than ever given social media, the internet, the rise of disinformation. But if you are sitting here at this table, you must be a radical skeptic because you aren’t there, Ben is. And I hope to God he makes it through. It is a horrible thing that happened to him and he is — to sound British, he is a lovely guy.”
Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott announced Zakrzewski’s death on Tuesday.
“It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that we share the news this morning regarding our beloved cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski,” the CEO said.
“Pierre was a war zone photographer who covered nearly every international story for FOX News from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria during his long tenure with us,” she said. “His passion and talent as a journalist were unmatched. Based in London, Pierre had been working in Ukraine since February.”
“His talents were vast and there wasn’t a role that he didn’t jump in to help with in the field — from photographer to engineer to editor to producer — and he did it all under immense pressure with tremendous skill,” she said.
“He was profoundly committed to telling the story and his bravery, professionalism and work ethic were renowned among journalists at every media outlet. He was wildly popular – everyone in the media industry who has covered a foreign story knew and respected Pierre.”
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