Media WATCH
The Project Veritas undercover video drop of the secret recordings made by a local Houston Fox TV news reporter is out, and it more than lives up to the substantial hype it received over a 24-hour period.Ivory Hecker, the now-fired former reporter for FOX 26, reveals how she was prevented from straying from the station’s pro-vaccine coronavirus health agenda or reporting on other issues that fell outside what she labels the corporate narrative.
“What’s happening within Fox Corp. is an operation of prioritizing corporate interests above the viewer’s interest and therefore operating in a deceptive way. Viewers are being deceived about some of the things that are going on," Hecker declares in the 17:27 video. The entire video can be seen here:
"It is unspoken, but if you accidentally step outside the narrative, if you don't sense what that narrative is, and go with it, there will be great consequences for you," Hecker told Project Veritas chief James O'Keefe.
"My newsroom kind of groups everyone into racial groups," Hecker added. She used Bitcoin as an example. Hecker, who worked as a dayside reporter primarily for the five and six o’clock news, recorded assistant news director Lee Meier telling her that black viewers who tuned in at that time had no interest in the cyber-currency.
"I have passed on Bitcoin stories by almost every single reporter for our five o’clock audience, because that’s not our five o’clock audience,” Meier says in the video. “Bitcoin for a poor African American audience at 5, it's probably not going to play. That's a choice I'm making. An editorial choice.”
The video relates how Hecker was prevented from reporting on Dr. Stella Immanuel discussing hydroxychloroquine as a potent coronavirus treatment.
“That story went viral July 27,” Hecker states. “The next morning at FOX 26 someone tipped me off, ‘this doctor’s from Houston.’ This is our local story. And we also, everyone noticed how it was getting censored across social media platforms like we’ve never seen before. We were all stunned by that.
“Dart [Bebel, Senior Vice President at FOX 26]... he said, ‘look it’s obvious why this is getting censored. President Trump said that hydroxychloroquine works. He retweeted her. And whatever he does, everyone wants to do the opposite.'”
Hecker says when she made her own social media post speaking out against this, “Fox came at my throat for standing up against censorship.”
For her, that was a turning point.
"You need to cease and desist posting about hydroxychloroquine," FOX 26 vice president and news director Susan Schiller tells Hecker in an undercover recording. "In my opinion, you failed as a reporter."
“Industry executives, who are the people who hire us and keep us employed, that’s the part that needs to make a difference to you,” Meier scolds Hecker. "It's not just about the viewers; it's about what our CEO reads; it's about what our GM reads.”
A Project Veritas reporter is later seen talking with FOX 26 photographer David Lanier, asking him, "How come you guys, like, are the all-vaccine, all-the-time channel?"
His answer was jarring.
"We hire producers, which are the ones that write the show, that are right out of college," says Lanier. "They just regurgitate what they are fed.”
Hecker says vaccines are profitable for FOX 26, an assertion that is backed up by a Project Veritas recording of sales staffers at the station.
“Jennifer Bourgeois, Sales Coordinator for Fox 26, admitted on tape that the [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is heavily influencing stations such as theirs due to the amount of money they are pouring into ad campaigns – and how that, in turn, affects the network’s coverage of major health issues,” Project Veritas reports.
“Yeah, they [CDC] are spending money. They are spending money because they can,” Bourgeois is recorded as saying. “Yeah, they can. They [CDC] are in the pocket. You know? They’re there.”
“Vaccines are a potential money maker for Fox,” Hecker elaborated. “Fox gets paid for that. As a viewer you need to look at who is advertising on this TV station, and you’ve got to realize -- surely that the TV station doesn’t want to hurt its advertisers.”
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Hecker confirmed that she had been fired by FOX 26.
“I have been longing to part ways with this strange, slightly unhinged corporation since last August when I realized what they were,” she exclaimed, adding that she has "zero interest in working for another corporation. They all toe the same line.”
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