Ivory Hecker, the Houston reporter who began her live shot last night by saying she was being muzzled by the company that owns the station she works for, has been fired.
The Daily Beast reports that Hecker, who had worked for Fox-owned KRIV, was terminated this afternoon. Her bio has been removed from the station website.
“I have been longing to part ways with this strange, slightly unhinged corporation since last August when I realized what they were,” she told the Daily Beast. “The piece with Project Veritas doesn’t touch what they did. Fox 26 knows I’m fearless.”
She added: “I have zero interest in working for another corporation. They all toe the same line.”
Hecker made news last night by starting her live shot, a story about air conditioners, by saying Fox Corp. had been silencing her, and alleged that she would prove with help from the far-right activist group Project Veritas by making secretly recorded conversations public.
“Before we get to that story, I want to let you, the viewers, know that Fox Corp. has been muzzling me to keep certain information from you, the viewers,” Hecker said live last night. “And from what I’m gathering, I am not the only reporter being subjected to this.”
“FOX 26 adheres to the highest editorial standards of accuracy and impartiality,” a KRIV spokesperson told TVSpy. “This incident involves nothing more than a disgruntled former employee seeking publicity by promoting a false narrative produced through selective editing and misrepresentation.”
Project Veritas, meanwhile, says it will be publishing a sit-down interview with Hecker tonight, and confirmed that it has videos and recordings it plans to release.
Hecker even took a jab at the flagship network of her former employer’s parent company: “I would turn down Fox News. They wanted to bring me up to the network. I met a lot of executives there and I don’t want to talk to them anymore. It came from one of the top executives there that what I needed to succeed was to get in line with the narrative.”
Shortly after she made her on-air revelation on Monday evening, Project Veritas—best known for its “sting” operations against media outlets and liberal political groups—confirmed that they had interviewed Hecker and that her story would be published on Tuesday evening. According to the James O’Keefe-led organization, their story will include a number of undercover audio and video recordings that were taken by Hecker.
Update: A Fox News spokesperson told TVSpy Tuesday night that while the network did have one meeting with Hecker, it did not include any “top executives” and she was never offered a job with Fox News.