The Tragic Life Of Fox News Correspondent Jennifer Griffin

Jennifer Griffin has been a mainstay of American news since the early 1990s, covering everything from the death of Osama bin Laden to Nelson Mandela's release from prison. The Harvard University graduate, once awarded the Freedom of the Media Gold Medal for Public Service by the Transatlantic Leadership Network, has also found herself on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine, the tsunami that devastated South East Asia, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while also finding the time to write an acclaimed political book, "This Burning Land," with fellow journalist husband Greg Myre.

But Griffin, who's perhaps best known for regularly reporting from the Pentagon as Fox News' Chief National Security correspondent, has also faced her fair share of personal and professional battles, too. From medical problems and marital issues to high-profile enemies and huge betrayals, here's a look at the more tragic side of the well-respected reporter's eventful life.  

Donald Trump fell back on old habits in 2020 when he essentially demanded Fox News tell one of its most respected journalists, "You're fired." Luckily for Jennifer Griffin, the network didn't give her any marching orders. But the whole furore undoubtedly soured her relationship with the White House administration.

The drama began when Griffin responded to a story in The Atlantic, which claimed that two years earlier, the 45th had decided to cancel a trip to a Parisian cemetery honoring fallen American soldiers. The reason? He allegedly believed soldiers who lost their lives in combat were "suckers" and "losers." The reporter responded on X that the piece was valid, adding that Trump had also wondered aloud why anybody would sign up to the military in the first place.

Of course, the former "The Apprentice" host vehemently denied such talk, taking to the same social media platform to declare, "Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting. Never even called us for comment. Fox News is gone!" Fortunately, the woman in his firing line was defended by her conservative colleagues and bosses and she kept her job. Referring to the incident, she later told Forbes, "My sources are not anonymous to me and I doubt they are anonymous to the president. I can tell you that my sources are unimpeachable."

Jennifer Griffin might not have been dropped by Fox News after her 2020 run-in with Donald Trump. But she was notable by her absence five years later when the kind of story she was appointed to tackle — and one she'd already addressed on social media — was covered on Fox News without her.

In 2025, Griffin repeatedly responded to The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg's claims that he'd been unintentionally added to a Signal group chat by Mike Waltz, the National Security Adviser. Ultimately, this meant he had access to contacts, including the Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence, JD Vance, and was provided classified information regarding the Yemen-based rebel group, the Houthis.

"The Trump administration does not deny this Signal group chat about the war planning for the Yemen strikes is real," Griffin tweeted in response, including a link to the report which stated the platform had security problems. But Mediate reported that even two days after the story broke, the journalist was still nowhere to be seen.

In 2009, Jennifer Griffin received the devastating news that she had triple negative breast cancer. But as you'd expect from a journalist no stranger to tackling difficult subjects, the Fox News regular decided to candidly share her experiences with the disease on her personal blog.

"I'm the Commander in Chief," Griffin wrote (via Oprah.com) in her first post about her diagnosis. "Al Qaeda cells have taken over parts of my body, and I have signed the Execute Order and sent in the Navy Seals with a shoot to kill order." In an interview with Women's Health Mag, the reporter revealed that she received regular mammograms over the last decade and that her mother and great-grandmother had the same condition. However, she wasn't able to get any screenings while pregnant with her son Luke, and it was only after he was born that a grapefruit-sized tumor was discovered.

"I didn't have enough time for self-pity," Griffin explained about how she coped with the news. "I'm a mother of three kids, and you don't have a lot of time to think about yourself. In my line of work, I've covered many wars; I worked for 15 years overseas. There was no way I was going to sit down and roll over and not fight it."

Thankfully, Jennifer Griffin was given the all-clear in 2010. But she had to take a new medication named carboplatin, normally given to colon cancer patients, undergo no fewer than 17 chemotherapy rounds, and have a double mastectomy before she was diagnosed as cancer-free.

In an interview with Oprah.com, Griffin revealed that she was apprehensive about the latter procedure, particularly after speaking to several other women who'd felt severely depressed for months afterward. However, after also undergoing reconstructive surgery soon after, the journalist was able to take something positive from the experience.

"When you look down and you see these great, voluptuous mounds, it's not as psychologically debilitating as it was for women 10 years ago who were getting the radical mastectomies," Griffin remarked before offering advice to anyone who finds themselves in a cancer battle: do your own research. "Do not trust one doctor. I love my doctors, and my team of doctors saved my life — but I double-checked ... I got a PhD in cancer by the end of this." She also stated the importance of getting regular mammograms and claimed that pregnant women are often underserved when it comes to the condition. "I get emails from other women who are the same age as me, with small children, who were diagnosed. We have to find a way to screen."

Five years after Donald Trump called for the head of Jennifer Griffin, the Fox News journalist found herself coming under fire from the defense secretary she used to work with. And Pete Hegseth made the 47th look positively restrained in comparison. In fact, he insulted her face-to-face.

Yes, in 2025, the former "Fox and Friends" co-host clearly took umbrage with Griffin's line of questioning about Operation Midnight Hammer in just one of many scandals that have rocked his reputation. The national security correspondent had asked whether Hegseth could be sure that Iran hadn't relocated its highly enriched uranium resources several days before an American airstrike. Instead of giving a measured response, the interviewee got defensive.

"Of course, we're watching every single aspect," Hegseth remarked (via The Independent). "But, Jennifer, you've been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says. I'm familiar." To make matters worse, "Fox and Friends" appeared to take the politician's side, complimenting him for fighting back against the media. Griffin insisted, however, that her reporting was nothing but highly accurate and was later backed up by colleague Brit Hume, who told viewers, "Her professionalism, her knowledge, her experience at the Pentagon is unmatched. I have had and still have the greatest regard for her. The attack on her was unfair."

Pete Hegseth wasn't the only former Fox News colleague who took a potshot at Jennifer Griffin for asking questions about the American military's airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities — and specifically the whereabouts of its enriched uranium. Indeed, the oft-shady Tucker Carlson, a man who's built a career on shooting his mouth off, described the national security correspondent as an outright liar.

In fact, the ultra-conservative, who once almost had a wildly different career, admitted on his podcast that he'd once been so offended by her apparent anti-Trump rhetoric that he'd had a word with his bosses about her. "And I really tried not to complain about other people at Fox when I worked there, because I don't like that office politics stuff, but she was discrediting the channel," he claimed (via The Hill).

But Carlson's shady tactics didn't end there. He also tried to get Griffin fired from her job, insisting that she was too emotionally volatile to hold an important position. "I said to an executive at Fox, 'What are we doing with this Jennifer Griffin person? She's an idiot. She doesn't tell the truth. She misleads our viewers, and she's like a screaming liberal who hates Trump, who our viewers love. So, what are we getting out of this?' And I was told, 'Oh, you could not touch Jennifer.' I don't know what that's about."

Jennifer Griffin is renowned for keeping her composure in the most difficult of situations. But even she struggled to hold back the tears while reporting on the deaths of consultant Oleksandra Kuvshynova and photojournalist Pierre Zakrzewski, the first two journalists to lose their lives in the field of duty in the history of Fox News.

"The loss and pain we feel is enormous, but if ever there were a time that the world needed journalists, reporters risking their lives to tell these stories, to tell the truth it's now," Griffin stated live on air (via Forbes) while speaking to Bret Baier. "Without a free press the autocrats win. We will redouble our efforts to honor these colleagues and all reporters in harm's way tonight."

The national security correspondent had first paid tribute to her late colleagues on X following the devastating news that they'd been killed in Ukraine by Russian fire. "Such a fine man. Such a good friend. Such a fantastic war photographer and so much more," she tweeted about Zakrzewski before describing Kuvshynova as a "bright light and talented journalist."

Jennifer Griffin has seen and done it all during her decades-long stint with Fox News. But as she told Forbes, it's her experiences in Afghanistan, an area she has reported on since 1993, that have left the biggest emotional impact.

Indeed, even while attending her daughter's convocation at Georgetown University, the Fox News journalist couldn't take her mind off matters thousands of miles away. "I sat there listening, feeling extremely emotional at the idea that they made the announcement that 60% of the Georgetown class were women this year. I just thought of those Afghan university students in Kabul, and how those girls are not going to be getting educated," she said. "It is too much. This is 20, 30 years of scar tissue."

Speaking in the wake of the U.S. Armed Forces' troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Griffin went on to admit, " ... Keeping in check the emotions of covering a story that I've spent my whole life engaged with, and the emotions of the humanitarian disaster that was so predictable ... it really has taken a bit of a toll." However, she also expressed her relief that the U.S. military was able to help evacuate nearly 125,000 refugees during their exit, insisting that her homeland should have a deep sense of pride. 

Having been on the frontline of world events for more than a quarter of a century, Jennifer Griffin's personal life has inevitably suffered. In an interview with People, the Fox News correspondent revealed that she's often had to skip family occasions because of her work. And having a journalist for a husband hasn't made things any easier, either.

"They grew up with a lot of independence having parents who had to drop things based on the news cycle," remarked Griffin, who's been married to national security correspondent for NPR Greg Myre since 1994. "They knew that we were often having to leave them. We're often unfortunately at times disappointing them by missing events because news gets away."

But Griffin and Myre have instilled a newshound sense into their three children. At the time, their youngest daughter, Amelia, was serving as her school newspaper's editor, while her sister Annalise was preparing for a Northwestern journalism program summer school. Their son Luke had become so fascinated by World War II he was able to have a 25-minute conversation with James Mattis, none other than the United States Secretary of Defense!

In 2016, Gretchen Carlson sued Roger Ailes for sexual harassment, prompting a flood of similar allegations against the Fox News CEO, which ultimately led to his resignation and one of the network's most controversial exits of all time. Having been given her big career break by the reported serial offender, Jennifer Griffin initially found it difficult to believe all the damaging stories, but soon realized, to her horror, that everything was true.

"It was a body blow for us," the national security correspondent admitted to People about the time she and her colleagues learned of the facts about one of Fox News' biggest scandals ever. "It was sickening, it was disappointing, it was a great sense of betrayal. We felt that we had been duped over the years, and I can tell you that across the board we felt physically ill when we heard these revelations."

Griffin went on to commend Carlson and all the other co-workers who'd spoken out, acknowledging that it must have taken a significant amount of courage to go up against someone as powerful as Ailes: "This was a case where this was very well hidden and it's a shame that it took so long for it to come out and that it went on as long as it did." She also praised the network and its owner Rupert Murdoch for responding that such conduct wouldn't be tolerated again. 

Jennifer Griffin may have been happily married to the father of three children, Greg Myre, since 1994. But thanks to their respective jobs on different sides of the news spectrum, they've often been forced to keep secrets from each other. In fact, they've even resorted to sleeping in separate beds to avoid spilling the beans.

In an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Griffin recalled working for an unnamed organization at the same time Myre was with the Associated Press. "I eventually stopped working for that newspaper because there were a lot of tears," she admitted.

Griffin also confessed that she once booted her other half out of their shared Iranian bedroom while she filed a certain piece in 1995. "It was a sore point," she said sheepishly. In the end, the couple decided that if they're covering the same area, it was best to stay in separate rooms. However, they do allow the sharing of notes and contacts, with Myre remarking, "She's been very good: 'Here's somebody who will be friendly, drop my name and tell them you're my husband.' The Pentagon is a confusing place and you have to know who to talk to. She knows all the generals."