Not surprisingly, Houston’s Fox26 reporter Ivory Hecker was fired after she interrupted a report on power outages to say she would be releasing secret recordings of Fox “muzzling” her from reporting “certain information.” What is surprising is that she wasn’t fired previously.
As we reported yesterday, Hecker said on the air, “I want to let you, the viewers, know that Fox Corp. has been muzzling me to keep certain information from you, the viewers — and from what I’m gathering, I am not the only reporter being subjected to this — I am going to be releasing some recordings about what goes on behind the scenes at Fox, because it applies to you, the viewers." She also said her revelations would be published by Project Veritas, the right-wing sleazes who are hardly a place to go if you’re a serious reporter with legit information.
Hecker made those on-air comments on Monday. The Daily Beast confirmed that she was subsequently fired. But Hecker’s “revelations” were hardly the kind of thing to toss a career down the drain for.
Her YouTube interview with Project Veritas' head sleazebag, James O’Keefe, began with Hecker's accusation that “yes, there’s a narrative, yes it is unspoken.” She said angrily, “If you don’t sense what that narrative is, and go with it, there will be grave consequences for you.”
I hate to break it to Ivory, but that is hardly news. Just ask Marie Harf or Ted Williams. In fact, former Fox producer Joe Muto wrote about that in 2013.
“I want out of this narrative news telling,” Hecker told O’Keefe. I want out of this corruption.”
But what was she actually muzzled about? We heard a tape of an unidentified person saying Hecker needed to “cease and desist posting about hydroxychloroquine.” Hecker also complained that Dr. Stella Immanuel’s claims about the drug as a cure for COVID-19 were being “censored.” (Remember Immanuel? She’s the Trump-praised quack who believes that sexual visitations by demons and alien DNA have caused many common health problems.)
Hecker suggested that the censorship was only because Trump praised Immanuel. We heard a recording of the station’s news director saying Hecker had “failed as a reporter” because she had not looked at the latest research about hydroxychloroquine when she claimed the drug was neither harmful nor helpful.
“I have never to this day advocated for that drug,” Hecker said, “but Fox said you’ve gotta stop being unbiased.”
“That’s just one of many stories” that had been “shut down” by the station, Hecker alleged. That’s what supposedly motivated her to secretly record her supervisors. We heard clips of them telling her that “everything” she did would be “under the microscope” and that she shouldn’t post anything without getting their approval. It's easy to see why they thought so, given her belligerence to her superiors.
O’Keefe did some “undercover reporting” that was little more than clips of employees saying, without any real proof, that the station is too pro-vaccine because of advertising dollars.
Hecker also claimed that the station groups viewers into racial groups, which is also hardly a surprise, given that Fox is the corporation whose CEO, Lachlan Murdoch, defended Tucker Carlson’s white supremacy and called him “brave.”
“You need to stand for something or fall for anything,” Hecker said. She declared herself through with corporate media.
O’Keefe said at the end of the video, “Ivory Hecker is ready to pursue a career in independent journalism where she can report the news without fear or favor.”
You can watch Hecker’s interview with O’Keefe below. But I recommend that you not bother.
I had a long list of other posts to do. I hope to get to Fox and Biden with Putin tomorrow.
In this case, he’s decided to smear Fox, apparently for not letting Hecker do more to promote the Pence White House’s spin on things like their quack “cures” for COVID, and for not letting her spin a tale about bitcoin on the air. Hecker, for her part, doesn’t come off particularly well in this discussion. She’s just unhappy that she didn’t get to do more to push the Pence line, when she figured Fox was all in for four more years.
O’Keefe’s motivation here for attacking Fox appears to be his rage over the reporting of the 2020 Election. Given that Fox News alienated much of its Far Far Right Wing base, which then turned to harsher propaganda outlets like Newsmax and OANN, it’s not a surprise that O’Keefe has joined the pile-on.
If anything, O’Keefe’s meltdown here against Fox is just one more example of the deep fissures that have developed within Right Wing circles over the past year.