Ivory Hecker – a former T.V. reporter with Houston’s Fox 26, now with the Project Veritas far-right activist group – joined WCCO today to discuss why she declared on-air that her former employers were “muzzling”, leading to her termination and national media attention.
“We, as free-speech loving Americans, should be concerned,” she told fill-in midday host Blois Olson regarding what she said was in increase in censorship last year. Her employers and co-workers at the station even told her not to criticize censorship, Hecker added.
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Hecker is a 32-year-old Wisconsin native who previously worked for the KARE 11 T.V. station in Minneapolis, said WCCO hosts. They also said this is Hecker’s first local interview since leaving Houston-based Fox 26, where she worked as a general assignment reporter.
According to the Daily Beast, Hecker interrupted a live on-air report June 14 to accuse her co-workers of muzzling her. She told the Daily Beast her former employer terminated her via text message after the incident. In her June 14 statements, Hecker revealed that she provided secret recordings to Project Veritas, an organization founded in 2011 by conservative activist James O’Keefe.
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Hecker told WCCO hosts that her trouble with the local Fox affiliate was in part driven by her reporting about COVID-19 treatments, including hydroxychloroquine. Although she was initially assigned her to cover the issue, the station eventually banned her from covering COVID-19 treatments and began “defaming” her internally, Hecker said.
She then began recording videos inside the studio at the suggestion of her attorney, Hecker explained.
“They begged me not to have a lawyer,” due cost concerns, Hecker told Olson of Fox 26.
When she realized she wanted to leave the company and do “journalism without interference,” Hecker decided to provide her recordings to Project Veritas after they reached out to her.
Olson asked if she wants to tell her story in other outlets, and said he has questions about Project Veritas, which has been involved in a defamation suit against the New York Times.
“A lot of media outlets don’t really want to shine light on my story, because it criticizes them,” she said.
At KARE 11, Hecker did not feel as must narrative pressure as she did while in Houston, though she did say there was some narrative control there, specifically around reporting on former Democratic governor Mark Dayton.
“They allowed me to do stories outside the narrative,” she said.
Hecker told WCCO she has just became crowdfunded, has done a pro-bono report for Project Veritas and is still considering how she wants to continue reporting in the future.