(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Marine Corps spokesman calls Fox News 'disgusting' for false story about fallen soldier's remains [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-08-26 If you’ve ever wondered why Republicans in this country alternate between viewing President Biden either as weak, feeble and senile, or (on the other hand) the all-powerful scheming, criminal mastermind of a sprawling “crime family,” I have two words for you: Fox News. As the primary propaganda arm of the Republican party, Fox begins and ends each day’s broadcasting with some type of negative, mocking, or outrageous slur against Biden or members of his family, whether included in a chyron, an interview, or, in some cases an outright fiction. Their singular aim, of course, is to create a dominant counternarrative to Biden’s successes for Republican voters and other passive viewers of their noxious drivel to swallow and digest. And for Fox, that trough is constantly replenished. They 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 Fox’s seemingly endless spigot of disinformation. No matter how outrageous, treasonous or otherwise false the lie, if it’s contained in an opinion by a Republican it can always be readily regurgitated on Fox News. The story related to Fox News by Florida Republican Rep. Cory Mills, about one family’s struggle to get their daughter’s, a U.S. Marine’s sergeant, remains returned home, was no exception. The U.S.’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, carelessly orchestrated by Donald Trump and left to President Biden for its actual execution, provided Fox with a golden opportunity to lambast the Democratic President. Despite the fact that Republicans’ interest (like that of most Americans save those directly involved or their families) had dwindled since the George W. Bush administration had cast American troops into that quagmire, 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, tragically, not without the loss of American lives. Thirteen American service members 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. You might expect a political party to exercise some restraint when commenting on the death of an American service member. You might even expect that a news outlet would be circumspect about reporting on the saddest aspect of all, 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 Rep. Mills, who had met with families of those killed in the Kabul suicide attack. 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 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 DOD became involved. As such, Mills’ “account” was completely false). But the Marine Corps did more than simply advise the Fox network 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.“ According to Farhi’s report, there was no explanation given for the headline change in the body of the story. But unfortunately for Fox, that was still grossly misleading, and drew a scathing response from the Marine Corps spokesman, Maj. 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. Finally, Fox deleted the entire story from its website. It did not apologize. It did not issue a retraction. Nor, apparently, did it contact Gee’s family apparently at any stage in this process, according to Lawrence’s and Farhi’s reporting. The story appears to have originated when Gee’s mother-in-law explained her frustration about the process 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. For his part, Rep. 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 walkback of his account, while still indirectly blaming President Biden for the bombing. But not before the Republican Party’s chief village idiot, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville had put his two cents in: x The Pentagon is providing taxpayer funding for elective abortions, but not to transport our fallen heroes to their final resting place. This just shows how extreme the Pentagon’s unprecedented new abortion policy really is.https://t.co/H0kRvQbLiK — Coach Tommy Tuberville (@SenTuberville) July 26, 2023 Farhi notes that neither Fox News nor its reporter who covered the story responded to the Post’s requests for comment. Of course they didn’t. For them, it was just another day at the office. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/26/2189758/-Marine-Corps-spokesman-calls-Fox-News-disgusting-for-false-story-about-fallen-soldier-s-remains Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/