Seth Rich's parents break years of silence and reveal Fox News never apologized for lies about son's death

The parents of slain former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich broke years of silence this week to give a lengthy interview to NPR where they revealed Fox News never apologized to them for publishing lies about their son's death.

Fox News in 2020 reached a legal settlement with the Rich family over a false 2017 story it published -- and later retracted -- linking Rich to the leak of DNC emails to WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.

The false claim that Rich was behind the leak was a key part of the conspiracy theory that the DNC had Rich murdered, and has thus caused years of torment to the Rich family.

Even with all this, Fox News isn't owning up to its mistakes in publishing the retracted story.

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"Despite the resolution of all lawsuits about its discredited story, Fox has never explained what went wrong journalistically," writes NPR. "(Fox previously pointed to all the related litigation in declining to comment to NPR and others.) Fox has never publicly said, for example, whether it found proof that the federal law enforcement sources Zimmerman cited ever existed. Zimmerman did not respond to NPR's queries seeking comment."

Joel Rich tells NPR that the entire ordeal has made him permanently more mistrustful of other people, as right-wing operatives who offered to "help" him and his family after Seth's death were later revealed to be using the family's grief to fuel misinformation.

"It's changed how you act, who you will listen to, what you do when you're at home," he says. "Will you go to the store? And that's part of the damage that these conspiracies can do."

Rich also says that he has no regrets about suing Fox, even though it didn't result in a public apology.

"We are still glad we did this, because you get a settlement," Joel Rich says about suing Fox. "It may not have the words 'I'm sorry.' But you have the admission they did something wrong."

Read the whole interview here.