but catalitic hydrogenation will also reduce the benzene ring
Only at very high pressure & temperature. Generally, a nitroaromatic can be reduced to an aniline in a few hours under 1 atm of H
2 with Pd/C.
There are actually a lot of other alternative reductants that can be used for this as the aromatic nitro group is on of the easiest groups to reduce. This can be handy if you have an alkene somewhere else in the molecule.
On another note, in the original post a F–C acylation with CHOCl was proposed. This is not a feasible reaction since CHOCl is not a stable molecule (I believe it rapidly decomposes to HCl and CO).