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Ever wondered why Republicans in this country alternate between viewing President Joe Biden either as weak, feeble, and senile, or an all-powerful, scheming, mastermind of a sprawling “crime family?” Consider these two words: Fox News. As the primary propaganda arm of the Republican Party, Fox News begins and ends each day’s programming with some type of negative, mocking, or outrageous slur against Biden or members of his family, whether via commentary, a chyron, an interview, or, in some cases, outright fiction. The network’s singular aim, of course, is to serve a dominant counter-narrative to Biden’s successes for Republican voters and other passive viewers.
And for Fox, the trough is constantly replenished. Producers don’t seem to care what kind of swill they dump into it. There’s obviously no moral compass or journalistic imperative at work. For years they elevated Vladimir Putin into an object of admiration, while simultaneously heaping scorn on actual American patriots, simply because Donald Trump was credibly caught cavorting knee-deep in Russia’s disinformation cesspool. They enabled Trump and other Republicans’ atrocious performance during the COVID-19 pandemic, while hundreds of thousands of Americans met unnecessary deaths thanks, in no small part, to Fox’s own propaganda.
For elected Republicans, simply being interviewed by Fox News appears to effect a remarkable transformation, one in which they’re suddenly transported to a pleasant fantasy-land where every lie is accepted without reservation, pushback, or even questioning, all in the noble service of a seemingly endless spigot of disinformation. No matter how outrageous, treasonous, or otherwise false the lie, if it comes from a Republican, it can always be readily regurgitated on Fox News.
The story related to Fox News by a Republican congressman about one family’s struggle to get the remains of their daughter, a U.S. Marine sergeant, returned home, is no exception.
RELATED STORY: It took the Marine Corps to get Fox News to pull a fake story
The U.S.’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, carelessly orchestrated by Trump and left to Biden for its actual execution, provided Fox with a golden opportunity to lambast the Democratic president. Republicans’ interest—like that of most Americans, save those directly involved and their families—had dwindled since the George W. Bush administration had cast American troops into that quagmire. Then Afghanistan was, for a fleeting moment in 2021, thrust back into the spotlight as U.S. troops began to evacuate Kabul. That withdrawal was accomplished, but not without a tragic loss of life. Thirteen American servicemembers were killed during the withdrawal effort by a suicide attack just outside the Kabul airport. Those who died included a Marine sergeant named Nicole Gee.
One might expect politicians to exercise some restraint when commenting on the death of an American servicemember. One might even expect that a news outlet would be circumspect about reporting on the sad task of, transporting her remains home to the family.
But for Fox News, it was simply another chance to impugn President Biden.
As reported by Drew Lawrence, for Military.com:
The Marine Corps worked behind the scenes last month in an attempt to convince Fox News to retract its false story claiming a Gold Star family was forced to pay $60,000 to ship the remains of a Marine killed in Afghanistan, according to emails obtained by Military.com.
A service spokesman notified the news network that it was pushing an incorrect story and accused it of using the grief of fallen Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee’s family to draw in readers, the email exchanges, released through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request, show. Fox News eventually deleted the story with no correction, and it never reached out to the Gee family with an apology as the Marine Corps requested, the family said.
The “story” originated with a Florida member of the U.S. House, who‘d met with families of those killed in the Kabul attack and spoke to reporter Michael Lee. As The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi explains:
The July 25 FoxNews.com story relied on an account from freshman Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who stated that the family of Sgt. Nicole L. Gee had shouldered “a heavy financial burden” of $60,000 to retrieve her body from Afghanistan. Gee, 23, was one of 13 U.S. service members killed in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport in the frantic final days of the U.S. withdrawal.
It’s easy to understand why Fox News would have found the story irresistible: It implied that the Biden administration, already being gleefully attacked by Fox for carrying out Trump’s withdrawal plans, was callously foisting the burden of its own efforts on poor Gold Star families. $60,000? Cue the outrage machine! The Biden administration spits on veterans, and worse, their grieving families!
Of course, the story was a lie. As Lawrence’s report explains:
Gee’s family never paid a dollar to transport her remains, and the Marine Corps let Fox News know — in no uncertain terms — that the July 25 story was false in a series of emails over the following days.
Lawrence’s report notes that the transport of Sgt. Gee’s remains had been paid for by a non-profit before the Department of Defense became involved. As such, Mills’ “account” was completely false.
The Marine Corps did more than simply advise Fox leadership that the story was false. As Lawrence notes, in a series of emails directed to Fox executives, the Corps “accused [Fox] of using the grief of fallen Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee’s family to draw in readers,” and demanded a retraction, an apology, and a public statement from Fox explaining why the story was wrong.
According to Lawrence and Farhi’s reporting, Fox’s initial response was to change the story’s headline from the inflammatory “Family forced to pay to ship body of Marine killed after Pentagon policy change: ‘Egregious injustice.” to “Family shouldered burden to transport body of Marine killed in Afghanistan, GOP Rep says.“ The latter headline is a CYA (cover your ass) move, as it places the assertion firmly in Mills’ lap. According to Farhi’s report, there was no explanation given for the headline change in the body of the story, as is standard journalistic practice.
Of course, the CYA headline was still grossly misleading; it drew a scathing response from the Marine Corps spokesman, Major James Stenger, who, as Farhi reports, called Fox’s backtracking “disgusting.”
Stenger emailed executives again to say that the new headline and story were still false. “Using the grief of a family member of a fallen Marine to score cheap clickbait points is disgusting,” he wrote.
Fox ultimately deleted the entire story from its website, without an apology or retraction. Nor, apparently, did anyone from the network contact Gee’s family at any stage in this process—including during the original reporting—according to Lawrence and Farhi.
The only person to take responsibility here is Gee’s mother-in-law. She explained her frustration about the transport process—which includes a 47-page policy—in the meeting with Mills. According to Lawrence’s reporting, she attempted to contact Fox News to correct the mistake, although it’s not clear what if any response she received.
Mills deleted the story which he had previously proudly displayed on his website once the Fox link became inactive. On July 27, two days after the story was initially published, he issued a mealy-mouthed and wholly ambiguous walk-back of his account, while still indirectly blaming Biden for the bombing—and the family for being confused. But it was too late: the Republican Party’s bumbling coach of fools, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, had put his two cents in … and he’s never taken them back.
Neither Fox News nor Lee—the reporter behind the original story—responded to The Post’s requests for comment.
Of course they didn’t. For them, it was just another day at the office.
Editor’s Note: This story has been lightly edited and its headline has been changed.
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