I joined Fox in early 2008 as a contributor. I was struck from the beginning by the network’s flexibility and creativity, allowing me to expand my role from expertise in infectious diseases to health policy and Obamacare.
I was able to flex various journalistic muscles, too. I was sent to Phoenix to examine Sen. John McCain’s health records but ended up with the opportunity to deliver on-air reports.
I began to report for the network in earnest in 2012, and then in the spring of 2013, during the Boston Marathon, when two self-radicalized brothers executed the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, I managed to get permission from our top executives to head up there.
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On the way, I somehow convinced the PR team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to grant me the very first interview with a survivor — a woman. Our excellent production team wasn’t expecting me, as we had our top reporters already in the field, but they quickly transitioned to supporting and guiding me. She had been blown off her feet and badly wounded her leg. Her would-be boyfriend had carried her down one-way streets (going in the opposite direction of the cars) to MGH.
We were ready. She looked straight into the camera and said, “We can’t let the terrorists win. We must stay strong and not be afraid. Boston is a great city.”
Ten years later, another top Fox executive sent me to East Palestine, Ohio, following the train wreck there. One of the best field producers in the business came with me, and while I was in the neighborhood doughnut shop sampling the best doughnuts I’d ever had, she was assembling an array of guests who had all been injured or affected by the toxic smoke.
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The ERs in the area were calling it “situational anxiety,” but outside the temporary state health facility, I interviewed patients who were having trouble breathing while the smoke in the air gave everyone, myself included, a sore throat. People who swam in the river developed rashes, and the long-term health risks remained unknown.
The angels of Fox are the executives, producers, and bookers who have the vision and work ethic to seek out and present stories that would otherwise be missed.
We are a family that has developed strong bonds, and we look out for each other. When my father died earlier this year at age 102, the entire Fox management team, from the CEO on down, came to the funeral.
Senior Correspondent Ben Hall brings out the best in the Fox team, and they inspire him. Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin was crucial to arranging his extraction from Ukraine after a horrific near-death experience when his car was bombed and his cameraman and producer were killed in 2022. He survived, thanks to many angels, messengers from God, as I write in my new book, “THE ANGELS AMONG US.”
Here’s what Benjamin Hall shared with me about what he was thinking on the day he and his team were attacked in Ukraine:
“At this moment of trying to stay strong, I think of how I am going to get home. I think of my children. Our car has burned totally to pieces, and we are down on the road, down a slight little dip in the road where we are lying, and this one car comes out of nowhere, and it drives past us. And I am shouting at it, ‘We’re here! We’re here!’ And it doesn’t see us, and it keeps driving. And it is a car of Ukrainian special forces, and this same car, amazingly, has engine trouble ten minutes or so down the road, and they have to stop to figure that out. And because of that, they drive back again!”
Hall believes this event is a sign directly from God.
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“I have pulled myself further up by this time, dragging myself along, up toward the road, and as the car comes back again, I don’t know it’s coming. There it is… The last thing I remember is this guy jumping out. He grabs my body armor, grabs the back of my arm, and pulls me along the ground, running to his car.”
Is the vision of his daughter that he sees after the missile hits actually an angel? It’s the question everyone has, and I ask it of Hall.
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“Yeah, 100%, either she is an angel that comes to me when I need her, and she gives me the strength I need, and she brings me back, or it is because my body and my mind are calling for her. It’s after the first and then the second shell, when I go into this other world, that’s when I get shrapnel in the eye, and it takes out part of my skull. So, I am already pretty badly injured at this point. Then the third shell takes off my leg, my foot. But I’ve no doubt that my daughter is sent to me, and either it is God who sends her or my body needs it, and my mind goes to the place it has to go to find the right strength.”
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Ben Hall’s father had recently died in 2022, and Hall had just buried him when he flew from his father’s funeral straight to Ukraine. Hall can feel his father is there with him as well. It’s as if his father’s life has joined with his own now that his spirit has moved on to the next world, into heaven. His father gives him strength. His daughter is there with him, and so is his father.
Fox News loves Ben Hall, and his courage and strength inspire all of us.
