Houston's TV Newsroom to Right-Wing Media Pipeline
Have Local Network Affiliates Become A Breeding Ground for Red-Pilled Journos?
Over the past several years, a staggering number of Houston’s TV reporters have graduated from jobs at our local network affiliate newsrooms to shilling for conservative causes on right-wing media outlets.
Over the summer, ABC 13’s Brooke Taylor was picked up by Fox News as their new Dallas-based correspondent.
In January, long-time KPRC evening news anchor Dominque Sachse was lured out of retirement to work for the right-of-center Merit Street Media. (As we’ve already covered, their launch was attended by none other than Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.)
Ivory Hecker, who was fired from Fox 26 in 2021 for espousing batshit crazy views on COVID-19 is now a correspondent with far, far-right One America News network.
Shara Fryer is co-host of the daily morning news on far-right KTRH 740 where she frequently espouses debunked election denialism claims, platforms right-wing extremists, and shills for ultra conservative politicians. Fryer was behind the desk at ABC 13 for decades with her former colleague Dave Ward, whose conservative bias has bubbled up to the surface in retirement. He has endorsed GOP candidates like Tony Buzbee, Alex Mealer and others.
Some local journos don’t need to leave their jobs to push a rightward agenda.
Fox 26’s Greg Groogan and Randy Wallace are already known locally as spokespeople for conservative crime narratives, polititians, and causes, laundering GOP talking points and putting them on TV. Wallace, through his “Breaking Bond” crime-scare series and Groogan with his weekly “What’s Your Point?” program, where he hosts a diverse array of GOP-aligned guests with spurious agendas and financial backers he fails to disclose.
KPRC’s Mario Diaz was a Communications Director for Republican Senator John McCain in 2008.
Why it matters: This pattern runs counter to frequent GOP claims of left-wing media bias in Houston and raises questions about the state of TV newsroom cultures across our media market. Are millions of viewers in Houston unknowingly getting their information filtered through a biased lens?
What do you think? Is our local TV news skewed in one direction? Is Houston unique in sourcing a disproportionate number of news people to conservative news?