Beni Rae Harmony, Springfield, IL, ABC anchor, resigns after WICS station suspends her for delivering ’emotional’ live on-air tribute to Charlie Kirk in the wake of conservative icon’s assassination.
What are the qualities of a good news anchor? Neutrality? Keeping to your employer’s over all editorial directive? Daring to inject one’s own personal journey into a national story? Not betraying emotion? Bias? Or revealing one has a heart?
Beni Rae Harmony, a Springfield, Illinois, local ABC anchor, announced her resignation Monday night after the WICS station suspended her for delivering a live on-air tribute to Charlie Kirk, her first boss and mentor in the aftermath of the conservative icon’s assassination last week.
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Beni Rae Harmony announced she was leaving WICS-ABC20 Springfield on Monday after the outlet suspending her for airing an unprecedented 1-minute and 17-second tribute on Friday.
‘Many in the mainstream media have been fired or punished for mocking his assassination,’ Harmony wrote on X.
‘I believe I am the first to be targeted for honoring him on air.’
Harmony told her followers that her resignation ‘is guided by values that are essential to who I am, which I refuse to set aside in order to keep a job.’
‘I choose my faith and love of country, and always will,’ she stated.
Adding, ‘Thank you, Springfield. My home. My community. My people. God bless Charlie Kirk and his beautiful family, and God bless these United States of America.’
Following her announcement, Harmony’s bio page for the station was removed from its website.
During her tribute to Kirk, Harmony stated that it’s normal to feel ‘sadness’ or be ‘grieving’ over the slaying of the Turning Point USA founder. But as a journalist, whose bias and neutrality is the underpinning of professionalism, surely Harmony understood she would be tempting fate by choosing to inject her emotions and personal experiences and bias into a story that has gripped the nation since Kirk, 31, was gunned down while addressing students at the Utah Value University.
Which may have been fine had she first made sure to get her employer’s blessing. Irrespective of whether one agrees or disagrees with the politics and religious fervour that Charlie Kirk held and which Harmony obviously shared. But not necessarily her employer who Harmony represented. And ultimately what makes for good journalism and a company’s branding is neutrality, removing oneself from the story and presenting the facts. Of course easier said, than necessarily done.
Effective immediately, I have resigned from @WICS_ABC20 after being SUSPENDED for airing a non-partisan tribute to Charlie Kirk this past Friday.
Many in the mainstream media have been fired or punished for mocking his assassination. I believe I am the first to be targeted for… pic.twitter.com/y41QOWDBl5
— Beni Rae Harmony (@BeniRaeHarmony) September 15, 2025
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Seemingly on the verge of tears, Harmony revealed that Kirk was her first boss and had acted as a mentor to her earlier in her media career, teaching her to believe in herself and chase her dreams.
‘I want to share with you one of my favorite sayings that Charlie would always tell us at the office. He would yell it from the mountain tops, so please listen: ‘When conversations stop happening. When individuals become wordless, that’s when violence begins. So, if you do one thing today, make it be with passion, with conviction, stand up for your friends, stand up for your beliefs, and speak loudly, even if your voice shakes. Your words have meaning, your values have purpose. Never forget that,” Harmony recalled Kirk telling her earlier in her career.
‘Thank you, CK, you changed my life,’ she ended her tribute to the father of two.
Harmony worked as a producer and administrator for Kirk’s Turning Point USA mega organization in the Washington, DC- Baltimore area from Aug. 2021 to Feb. 2022, according to her LinkedIn.
While Harmony’s censuring came as a result of what some may regard as obsequious pandering, others have also faced censure, whether because they celebrated the divisive conservative influencer’s death, mocked his death online or stated an opinion, distasteful and repugnant as it may have been, while failing to understand that at the moment their status as a MSNBC political analyst, general surgeon treating hundreds of patients or as a neurologist in Miami blaming Kirk for his own shooting death, certainly risked alienating audiences and patients.
A point of contention that bosses at WICS presumably came to believe when they decided to suspend Harmony.
