Two years ago, Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall was critically wounded in an attack while reporting from Ukraine.
His cameraman, Pierre Zakrzewski, and a local journalist who was working as their translator and fixer, Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, were killed in the attack.
Hall, survived, albeit barely. He lost one leg and the foot on his other leg, he lost the use of one of his hands, and shrapnel cost him one of his eyes.
Now, Hall is returning to the field, with a two-part docuseries Surviving Hamas: A Benjamin Hall Special, set to debut on the Fox Nation streaming service April 9. The special “drills down on the events that unfolded that day and the impact it had on survivors,” per Fox News.
“Primarily we were there to tell the stories of some of the released hostages,” Hall tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And so I was there, moving around, we were down by some of the kibbutzes. So one side it was a story I’ve wanted to tell all along, but on the other hand, it was about me getting back to work.”
The reporting for the special was a milestone for Hall’s recovery as well. Sitting in a quiet corporate cafe high up at Fox’s New York headquarters, the correspondent spoke about the difficulty in learning to report again, noting how he can only get “maybe a week” in the field before he needs rest.
“It was the first time I had actually been out to do a whole week doing lives, filming, to see how physically I could do that,” Hall says. “So it was both the story, as well as it was a learning curve for me.”
“But boy, it was perhaps the first time that I’ve noticed a change inside me, in terms of my reporting,” Hall continued. “I did some of these interviews with released hostages and some of the people who’d lost their whole family down in the kibbutzes. And I felt something that I’d never felt before during an interview, which is a real understanding of their loss, a real understanding of the difficulties that they were going through. And I always asked myself before, ‘how could you go to these hard places and tell these difficult stories but not let it affect you? How can you block it off?’ And through whatever has happened to me, I feel that I understand some of these issues in a bigger way. And I honestly think it has made me a better journalist as such.”
“As we approach the sixth month anniversary of the October 7th attack on Israel, Ben’s unique perspective provides a powerful series that explores grief, resilience and survival through the lens of those most closely impacted,” added Fox Nation president Lauren Petterson.
The first episode will focus on Maya Regev, a survivor of the attack on the Supernova Music Festival, while the second episode will focus on the survivor’s of the Nir Oz kibbutz.
And while Israel is not in the same situation as Ukraine (Hall lamented the “innocent civilians being killed in both” countries, as well as in Gaza), he said he and his wife spoke before he committed to returning to the field.
“First of all, it was a conversation that my wife and I had to have for a long time beforehand: Is it the right thing? should I be going out back into any sort of conflict zone after what happened to me?” Hall says. “So we thought about it a lot. And it was a decision we spent a lot of time making.”
“I always knew right from the beginning, that I wanted to be going back, that journalism is what I love doing, and I wasn’t sure what way I would be doing it but conflict is something that I still find the most fascinating story to cover,” he continued. “You’ve got the stories on the ground, you’ve got the people who are caught up, but then you’ve got the geopolitics, you’ve got the economy, you’ve got the finances, you’ve got the military, and I just feel that I find it to be the most incredible subject to cover. And that’s one of the reasons I wanted to go back to doing it again.”
Hall, ultimately, intends to keep working, even if he is still pushing the limits of what he is physically capable of.
“It felt good to be telling stories again, it felt good to realize that no matter what happened to me, I won’t be stopped from doing that, you know, My life won’t change,” Hall says. “I will keep doing what I did.”
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