Lt. Commander John W. Lee Jr. was the first Black commissioned Navy officer, achieving the historic feat on this day in 1947. The late Navy man made it his personal mission to aid other qualified Black servicemen in his branch to get the same opportunities he did.

Lee was born February 13, 1924 and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. Not much is known about his early life, but he entered the Navy in 1944 during the heights of World War II. After leaving boot camp, he was admitted into the V-12 Officer Candidate Program at Indianapolis’ DePauw University and graduated as an Ensign.

In an interview with the Navy back in 1977, Lee shared that his parents weren’t thrilled about his military career and wanted him to join the family business. Instead, he chose to be commissioned as an Ensign by the regular Navy two years after making the rank. Lee shared in his accounts that he believed other Black Navy men could have become officers and worked behind the scenes to move things into that direction.

Along with a stint in World War II, Lee also served in the Korean War and was an assistant navigator for the USS Kearsarge. He also sailed on the USS Toledo and the USS Wright for various war and support missions. In 1960, Lee became the commanding officer of the Oceanographic Detachment Two division. The unit prepared ocean surveys for the deployment of Polaris submarines.

Before his retirement in 1966, Lee served on the NATO staff in Paris and left the Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Afterwards, he worked two years for Indianapolis’ Naval Avionics Center.

Lee died at the age of 85 on September 17, 2009.

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Misinformation is hard to avoid online, but we must hold the news to a higher standard of truth than internet pundits and armchair epidemiologists. The first amendment gives us the right to free speech, but it doesn’t give us the right to call opinion news. There must be consequences for knowingly spreading lies and marketing them as “news.”

New organizations are responsible for ensuring their information is factually correct. However, Fox News’ unabashedly propagandized pundits have no such qualms. From climate change to outrageous claims against coronavirus public health measures. Fox News routinely broadcasts false and misleading information, disguising news as propaganda.

Now, Fox News is spreading so much misinformation about Russia’s unjustified, unwarranted invasion of Ukraine that Russian state television broadcasts their clips with Russian subtitles. That’s just the beginning.  

An independent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that Fox News viewers were three times more likely to believe COVID-19 misinformation than viewers who get their news from anywhere else. In fact, Fox News viewers are likely to be less informed than those who don’t watch any news and show decreased knowledge of science and society.

Fox News’ constant repetition of misinformation makes their views more misinformed and likely to act in ways that are dangerous to themselves and worsen the pandemic.

This isn’t the merits of one news organization versus another. This is about information that affects what happens to people, whether they get sick and eventually die from disease when they don’t have to, how they disregard a global climate disaster, and how they downplay war crimes at the hands of a Russian invasion. We must hold Fox News responsible and strip away their advertising.

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