Fox News issued an apology Saturday night for the false story it ran on its website about a Gold Star family being billed by the Pentagon to have the remains of their fallen Marine transported to Arlington National Cemetery.
Citing freshman Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., Fox originally posted the story on July 25 about the family of Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee being billed $60,000 by the Pentagon to have her remains shipped home from Afghanistan. Gee was among 13 service members killed in the Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing at the Kabul airport.
Gee’s family publicly stated they were not billed and reached out to Mills to clarify that they were not. Mills walked back his assertion in an X social media post on July 27.
Fox News, however, refused to take down the story until sometime last week, when it quietly removed it without a retraction or a direct apology to Gee’s family, according to Military.com.
The headline of the story: "Family forced to pay to ship body of Marine killed after Pentagon policy change: 'Egregious injustice.'"
It wasn’t until Saturday night that Fox News finally acknowledged the situation — to Mediaite.
“The now unpublished story has been addressed internally and we sincerely apologize to the Gee family,” Fox News said in its statement to Mediaite.
In fact, removing the story came only after the Marine Corps worked behind the scenes for nearly a month to convince Fox News brass to spike it, according to Military.com, which cited email exchanges obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Marine Corps informed Fox News that the Gee family did not pay $1 toward the shipping of her remains.
"Using the grief of a family member of a fallen Marine to score cheap clickbait points is disgusting," Maj. James Stenger, lead spokesperson for the Marine Corps, wrote to Fox News in one email.
The Corps requested a full retraction, an apology to Gee’s family and a public explanation. Fox did none of it, according to Military.com, save for Saturday night’s statement.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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