Ivory Hecker - Fox 26

Project Veritas released a video on June 15, 2021, featuring a sit-down interview with Fox 26 reporter, Ivory Hecker, who blew the whistle on her own network for what she said were acts of deception. She claimed the station’s editorial decisions were an affront to honest journalism. 

The day before, Hecker announced on live TV that she was blowing the whistle on Fox’s Houston affiliate.

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Hecker, who served as a dayside reporter primarily for the five and six o’clock news, came forward to Project Veritas with recordings of her colleagues and superiors showing a pattern of “censorship” on COVID-19 and Bitcoin-related stories. She also highlighted a pattern of submission among the local affiliate’s leadership to Fox’s corporate interests, rather than acting in the interest of transparency with its viewers.

“Viewers are being deceived about some of the things that are going on,” Hecker told Veritas. 

One major issue Hecker addressed was the pressure that Fox 26 would exert on her to minimize stories presenting Hydroxychloroquine as an acceptable treatment for COVID-19. She cited a seemingly tangled web of ad dollars, network corporate executives, government health departments and financial incentives as the main reasons behind such censorship. 

“Fox came at my throat for standing up against censorship,” Hecker added. 

She secretly recorded phone calls with two of her supervisors, Vice President and News Director, Susan Schiller, and Assistant News Director, Lee Meier.

Hecker also cited a specific story in which Lee Meier, her boss, deemed a Bitcoin piece to be inapplicable “for a poor African-American audience” that represents a large portion of Fox 26’s audience during the five o’clock hour. 

Veritas reporters recorded members of the Fox 26 team shedding light on the surprisingly young producers who joined the network “right out of college,” the mechanics of how ad dollars affect stories, and the recent push to publicize the Coronavirus vaccine as much as possible. 

Jennifer Bourgeois, Sales Coordinator for Fox 26, admitted on tape that the CDC 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. 

“Yeah, they [CDC] are spending money. They are spending money because they can,” she told an undercover Project Veritas reporter. “Yeah, they can. They [CDC] are in the pocket. You know? They’re there.” 

Hecker went on to say her superiors lost their way when they forgot their “first loyalty is to the citizen.” 

“Vaccines are a potential money maker for Fox,” she explained. “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.” 

When asked why she would risk her career and professional reputation to come forward, she said the “corruption” at the network became too overwhelming. 

“It affects the viewers. That's why I'm doing this,” Hecker explained. “The viewers are being deceived by a carefully crafted narrative in some stories, okay? In some areas they do fantastic journalism. For some reason, some of these stories have an incredible slant. If you accidentally step outside [the narrative], they try to internally destroy you -- as I've witnessed firsthand.” 

She concluded, “At this point, I want out of this narrative news telling. I want out of this corruption. I want to tell true stories without fear of whether it fits the corporate narrative.”