A former Illinois TV anchor spoke to Fox News Digital about why she chose resignation after being reprimanded for her on-air tribute to murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
A former Illinois TV anchor said she gladly quit her job rather than have to be silent about the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Former WICS-ABC20 Springfield anchor Beni Rae Harmony spoke to Fox News Digital about resigning after she was suspended for airing a tribute to Kirk last Friday and refusing to remove it from her social media accounts.
Harmony previously worked at Turning Point USA, the conservative advocacy group Kirk founded at age 18, from 2021 to 2022.
“I said, ‘Well, I’m not gonna stick around for that.’ I said, ‘I resign, and I refuse to be silenced. I refuse to be told I cannot talk about someone that I cared about,’” Harmony said, describing what she told her bosses after they informed her she was suspended and faced a possible firing for the tribute.
Harmony explained to Fox that in the days after Kirk was murdered, she felt compelled to speak in his memory. Harmony hosted the outlet’s “Marketplace” show about the central Illinois community before her exit.
“I was finishing up my rundown, finishing up my scripts, and I just felt this sense of, ‘I have to say something. I have to do something.’ And I went to my last block, and I typed a few words, not even a lot. I left it there”, she said.
The former anchor thought her newscast directors would simply remove or edit the remarks, or “censor me without me even having to say anything”, but they didn’t.
