FNC’s Benjamin Hall: Survival, Faith & The Future Of News

As a war correspondent, Benjamin Hall has covered stories of those caught in conflict, violence and tragedy — but on March, 14, 2022, he became part of the story. And the story of his life changed forever.

(Full interview video embedded below.)

When Hall Became a War Casualty in Ukraine

Not long after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of that year, Hall and colleagues Pierre Zakrzewski and Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova were riding in a car outside Kyiv, when incoming fire struck their vehicle.

Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova were killed, but Hall survived — barely. He later recalled how a vision of one of his little daughters urged him, his body shattered, to crawl out of the burning car. He was found and taken to a hospital for treatment.

Hall lost the lower part of his right leg, suffered damage to the left leg/foot, lost his left thumb and sight in his left eye, along with also having burns and traumatic brain injury.

The story of how the nonprofit Save Our Allies managed to essentially smuggle Hall out of the combat zone and into Poland is the stuff of the most dramatic of adventure films. From Poland, Hall was taken by the U.S. military to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and then later to the Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) in San Antonio, Texas.

Some 30 surgeries, prosthetics and much grueling physical therapy later, the British-born Benjamin Hall — who was raised in the Catholic faith of his Philippines-born father — returned to his wife and children in London.

And later, he was back to work at Fox News Channel as a senior correspondent.

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Hall Turns His Experience Into Two Books From HarperCollins

Hall documented his rescue and time at BAMC in his first book, Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission to Make It Home (2023).

Then, in 2025, he released Resolute: How We Humans Keep Finding Ways to Beat the Toughest Odds. It tracks more of his journey to rebuild his life, and the lessons about human resilience — and his own relationship with his Catholic faith — he learned along the way.

I actually did the audio versions of both of these books, read by the author — who does an excellent job (as one might expect of a professional broadcast journalist).

Talking to Benjamin Hall About Journalism, Faith, Storytelling and More

I recently had an extended conversation with Hall about a number of topics, including:

the uncertain future of international journalism (and its subset, reporting from war zone)
how his visible injuries have changed his reporting
returning to active reporting — including for Fox News, and in his Fox Nation podcast Searching for Heroes and series American Exceptionalism
finding his way back to the Catholic faith of his childhood
being present at the recent papal conclave and what that meant to him

The full interview is embedded below, but here are some excerpts:

On restoring trust between the public and the media:

What I’ve also noticed recently is that, because of the loud noise and the voices that you get on social media, there is actually more attention to be paid and is being paid to real networks, to real newspapers, to real journalists.

And I do think that actually the public who, for a moment, was swayed towards getting all their news from social media, are back looking for verifiable sources, really good journalists who they can trust now. …

I say this as a father of four, I’m so aware of where my children will get their information, and what I say to them all the time is, don’t just trust the first person you see.

Listen to a few people and then eventually you start to develop a relationship or you start to trust someone, because you have spent quite some time looking at this network or reading that writer, and you have seen that they are telling the truth, that they are bringing the facts to you.

And then I think once you develop that relationship with someone, then that’s someone you can trust. So it’s about finding the people you trust.

It’s about doing so over time by comparing it to others, by reading other news sources. And I think that it’s, again, networks and newspapers that can do that.

On the importance of being there:

I’m a firm believer, it doesn’t matter how many facts you can pull together … I’m a firm believer that you need someone there. You have to be able to, I would say, to smell the earth, look someone in the eyes.

I always found that when you go to tell a story, you always have an idea in your mind of what the story might be when you’re going there, you do the research, it’s always different. There’s always something you didn’t notice. There’s always an angle you hadn’t thought of. There’s a relationship that you didn’t see.

You don’t get that no matter how much fact that you have or statistics you have thrown at you, you don’t get the nuance of a story unless you are there.

On dealing with his physical limitations:

I feel it all the time, and I was always very good at, after I was injured, to realizing life is different. There are things you can’t do that you used to do, and that’s OK. Embrace what you can. Forget what you can no longer do.

On why he didn’t discuss his Catholicism in Saved:

The reason I didn’t write about it in Saved, and even when I picked the title Saved, I was thinking about was I saved by angels or by God at the beginning, and yet I didn’t write about it in the book.

And that’s because my own journey with religion and my Catholicism has been very varied my whole life.

And during my recovery, there were moments when we always talk about, “Why does God allow terrible things to happen?” Natural disasters it, it’s a big question. Everyone who’s religious asking it as well. It was the back of my mind as well.

And I hadn’t been that close to my religion, but it is always a part of me.

On why he did write about his faith in Resolute:

It’s OK to have your journeys with religion. It’s OK to sometimes feel really strong about it, and it’s OK sometimes not to feel strong about it. I think perhaps that makes it even stronger, when you’re questioning it and asking about it, and you want to understand it. That’s how you build strong relationships with things.

And so I thought, when I wrote Resolute, that I really want to write about it. And I wrote about a number of occasions where I just remember seeing a few moments where, when I needed it, or when things were terrible, there was that little beacon of God.

On being in St. Peter’s Square during the conclave in May 2025:

I was just in the conclave in Rome as well, and I was covering that for Fox. … I was down in St. Peter’s Square and being surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Catholics unified in their faith and hope and optimism and kindness and brought together.

And even there, it was another big moment for my making me stronger. I was like, this is something you don’t usually see so many people together. And there we all were together …

I thought, “This is amazing.” What a great strength. And you might feel that your religion is just you and your religion, but it’s not. It’s so much bigger than that. It’s so many people. It’s everywhere in the world.

And wow, not many things … in fact, I can’t think of anything [else] that brings together people from so many different cultures and countries.

On shifting his focus from conflict to community:

I believe that we are living in a world where we do have to be a bit proactive. and we have to show, particularly the young, that you’ve got to be involved in community. You’ve got to help people who are knocked down.

And I didn’t feel it as strongly until I was so badly injured. All the people who came to lift me up … and I’m a journalist who have seen people knocked down around the world in wars my whole career. But, even I didn’t quite get what it means to be at the receiving end of that.

And wow, it probably saved me, it got me through the worst moments with joy and optimism because there are people helping me.

Here’s the whole thing — and there’s a lot more great stuff in there, including about being a dad … and who might play him (and his wife) in the movie about his rescue.