Fox News reportedly apologized to the family of fallen Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee for a false article published in July, CNN reported.
In the now-deleted July story, Fox reported that the family of Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, who was among the 13 US service members killed in the 2021 Abbey Gate terrorist attack in Kabul, had to foot the $60,000 bill to ship her remains from Afghanistan after the Pentagon refused to pay.
The false claim that made the basis of the Fox News story came from freshman Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida.
While the story has since been removed, Fox was forced to issue a statement about the matter this weekend after a report from Military.com revealed the behind-the-scenes attempts by the US Marine Corps to get Fox to retract the story.
According to Military.com, which obtained communications through a FOIA request, in a series of emails following the publication of the July 25 story, the US Marine Corps made it clear that the family did not have to pay anything to transport Gee’s remains.
At first, Fox attempted to soften the story by altering the headline and adjusting the copy.
However, in an email after the changes were made, Marine Corps spokesman Maj. James Stenger said the corrected headline was “still misleading” and the content of the report was “still false.”
Stenger wrote that it was “disgusting” that Fox would use the family’s grief “to score cheap clickbait points.” The following day, the Marine Corps requested that Fox retract the story, offer an apology to the Gee family, and provide a public explanation.
According to Military.com, Congressman Mills removed the story from his Congressional website and also deleted his post on X promoting the Fox story.
In a statement on Saturday, a spokesperson for Fox News said the network has addressed the now-deleted story “internally” and has apologized to the family.
