Chris Wallace Announces He's Leaving Fox News
Today, Chris Wallace confirmed that he will be leaving his post at Fox News and heading to CNN+ to host a weekday show.
"After 18 years — this is my final 'Fox News Sunday.' It is the last time, and I say this with real sadness, we will meet like this," Wallace said on the air, sharing that he was "ready for a new adventure."
Shortly after his final appearance on Fox, CNN released a statement from Wallace. "I am thrilled to join CNN+. After decades in broadcast and cable news, I am excited to explore the world of streaming. I look forward to the new freedom and flexibility streaming affords in interviewing major figures across the news landscape—and finding new ways to tell stories," it read.
In light of the news, here, some background on the journalist.
Broadcast journalism is the Wallace family business.
Chris's father, Mike Wallace, was the longtime host of CBS's 60 Minutes Sunday news show. However, Chris did not have a relationship with his father until the 1990s. It was Bill Leonard, Chris's stepfather and President of CBS News, whom the budding journalist called "Dad." Leonard got Chris interested in news and even helped him get a job assisting Walter Cronkite at the 1964 Republican National Convention. He called Leonard “the single most important person in my life.”
It wasn't until Leonard died in 1994 that Wallace became close with his father. Chris was recently divorced and his father was also single; the pair spoke nightly and rebuilt their relationship. Now, at 72, Wallace is out from under his father's shadow.
“I’ve always in my career been the Kid,” Chris Wallace said to TIME. “I’m kind of the elder statesman now, which I kind of enjoy.”
As for his own family, Wallace has four children from his first marriage to Elizabeth Farrell, whom he would eventually divorce. In 1999, he married his current wife, Lorraine Smothers (who was first married to comedian Dick Smothers), and gained two step-children. They now have several grandchildren.
Wallace has spent his whole life reporting the news.
Starting with that first job assisting Walter Cronkite, Wallace was hooked on political journalism. After attending Harvard, Wallace turned down Yale Law School (where he would have been classmates with Hillary Clinton) to work for The Boston Globe. He eventually moved to TV news, starting at local stations until NBC promoted him to their Washington, D.C. bureau.
Wallace rose quickly, becoming the network's chief White House correspondent, and, in 1987, host of the famed Meet the Press. A year later, ABC plucked the anchor for their new news magazine, PrimeTime Live. After some conflict at ABC, Wallace left as soon as his contract was up. In 2003, his friend Brit Hume introduced him to Roger Ailes, the CEO of Fox News.
Wallace's time at Fox has not been without its hiccups. He has clashed with other anchors, and no longer appears on the network's morning program, Fox & Friends. He cried when he learned of Ailes' sexual assault allegations. (In 2016 23 women made sexual assault allegations against Ailes, after which he resigned.) Ahead of today's announcement, Wallace had said that Fox News would be the last job he would have in journalism.
In 2020, he moderated the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Wallace said he hoped to be “as invisible as possible” while moderating.
“I’m trying to get them to engage, to focus on the key issues, to give people at home a sense of, ‘why I want to vote for one versus the other,' ” he noted. "But if I’ve done my job right, at the end of the night, people will say, ‘That was a great debate. Who was the moderator?’”
He's no stranger to debate moderating.
In 2015, Wallace, alongside other Fox News personalities, moderated the first Republican presidential primary debate. In 2016, Wallace became the first Fox News host to moderate a general election debate, serving as a referee between Trump and Hillary Clinton. There, he garnered praise from both sides of the aisle, from Oprah Winfrey to Bret Stephens, the Wall Street Journal's deputy editorial page editor.
That is, Wallace was praised by everyone except Trump himself, who preemptively questioned the merit of the debate. “It’ll be unfair, I have no doubt about it,” the President told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade. “He’ll be controlled by the radical left. That’s what—they control him.”
Kilmeade responded, “I will tell you for sure he is not controlled by anyone, Chris Wallace.”
But Wallace received pushback, specifically for the debate's topics. Some liberals have criticized that climate change is not a listed topic, yet the seemingly partisan "Race and Violence in Our Cities" is.
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