Meet Ivory Hecker, the reporter sabotaging her local news gig for conservative clout

Monday night, a local news reporter for Fox 26 Houston began her dispatch with a bit of a left-field introduction: Instead of going straight into her interview with an air conditioning maintenance worker about the city’s recent heat wave-induced power outages, she informed her unsuspecting audience (and producers) 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.” She then declared her intention to release tapes soon “about what goes on behind the scenes at Fox” thanks to a little help from “a non-profit journalism group called Project Veritas,” before returning to her on-site story as if she hadn’t just gone rogue on live television.

So, who is this news anchor who “found” Project Veritas to help with her damning exposé? Readers, meet Ivory Hecker:

Ivory. Hecker.

Not since Tomi Lahren has a name so perfectly befit an aggrieved, conservative white woman, further evidenced by her team-up with Project goddamn Veritas, which is less a “non-profit journalism group” and more a “heinous, manipulative smear campaign outlet aiding the worst grifters floundering around America’s ultra-conservative cesspools.” And just what did Ms. Hecker expose through her sit-down with Project Veritas that debuted Tuesday night?

…That, um, Fox 26 generally tries to enforce journalistic standards and fact-check allegations, like hydroxychloroquine being an effective curative medication for COVID-19 (it isn’t). They also don’t think covering subjects like Bitcoin would particularly interest the station’s primary audience demographics, which sounds more like an editorial decision than any conscious cover-up attempt or bias.

“I want out of this narrative news telling! I want out of this corruption!” demanded Hecker to Project Veritas founder, James O’Keefe, during their ten-minute video segment… a wish which was promptly granted to her by Fox 26, who summarily fired her less than 24-hours after her on-air stunt. Hecker, for her part, vowed to The Daily Beast that she has “zero interest in working for another corporation. They all toe the same line,” while adding, “the piece with Project Veritas doesn’t touch what they did. Fox 26 knows I’m fearless.”

What’s interesting here (and forgive us for potentially stretching the definition of “interesting”) is that Project Veritas stunts have long been a favorite of Fox News and their particularly foam-mouthed viewers, so to see O’Keefe and his cronies take advantage of Hecker’s desperate hope for her own show slot on OANN, Newsmax, or The Blaze opposite Tomi Lahren’s Outrage Hour seems like self-defeating strategy. Then again, it’s not like Project Veritas is exactly known for “well-thought-out plans.”

Hecker claims to have thought all this out and during her interview with O’Keefe, she vowed that she would turn down any job offers from Fox News. She even alleged that, “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.”

Fox News, for its part, claims that’s a bunch of horseshit, informing The Daily Beast that “the network did have a single meeting with Hecker but claimed it was only as a courtesy and the reporter was never offered a job.”

It remains to be seen what will become of the newest “Speak to the Manager” avatar that is Ivory Hecker. Will she achieve her dream of ascending to the pantheon of fringe conservative media darlings like Lahren and that Kent State gun nut woman? Or will her brief, shoddily planned boost of fame quickly evaporate into the ether like water on a Houston summer sidewalk? Unfortunately, either outcome will almost certainly only further Ivory Hecker’s sad, delusional descent into self-righteous, misinformed, entitled outrage.

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