Fox’s Wallace to speak at Guardians dedication
First Amendment memorial honors slain Annapolis journalists
Chris Wallace, the longtime Fox News host and a recent Annapolis resident, has been tapped to be the keynote speaker at the dedication of a First Amendment memorial in Annapolis this summer, according to a letter obtained by The Capital.
“The City appreciates your willingness to be the keynote speaker for this effort to recognize and remember the Capital newspaper reporters and staff and to have a permanent commitment to the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” Mayor Gavin Buckley wrote to Wallace on Thursday. “We want to always remember that the 1st Amendment is important to our civil society and to all Constitutional protections that are crucial to our democracy.”
The Guardians of the First Amendment Memorial will be dedicated on June 28, the third anniversary of the shooting at the Capital Gazette newsroom in 2018 that took the lives of five staff members, Rebecca Smith, Wendi Winters, John McNamara, Rob Hiaasen and Gerald Fischman.
“This will be the first memorial of its kind in the nation. It’s appropriate that the keynote speaker be someone with a national reputation because I think it will draw people’s attention from around the nation,” said Carl Snowden, a civil rights activist who chairs a committee that erects memorials in Anne Arundel County.
“In our opinion, there is nobody that could speak better to the issue that this memorial represents than Chris Wallace, so we are very delighted to have him accept our invitation to be the keynote speaker.”
Wallace, who has appeared as an anchor on Fox News since 2003, and also had stints at ABC News, NBC News and The Boston Globe during his long journalism career, moved to Annapolis with his wife in 2019. He could not be reached for comment.
Snowden has led the effort to build the memorial that will be located at Newman Park in Annapolis. Last June, the state of Maryland awarded $300,000 to help fund the project. Construction is currently ongoing and set for completion by June 28.
The event is expected to draw political dignitaries from all levels of government, including Gov. Larry Hogan, the Maryland Congressional Delegation and state and local leaders, Snowden said.
In December, President Donald Trump signed into law the Fallen Journalists Memorial Act, which authorizes the construction of a memorial honoring journalists slain doing their job, including the five Capital staffers. The monument will be built in Washington D.C. and is expected to take seven years to build.
The dedication is scheduled to take place one day before jury selection in the second portion of the trial of the man convicted of murdering the five staff members of the newspaper, Jarrod Ramos. He has pleaded guilty to the murders but will attempt to convince a jury he was not responsible for his actions at the time because of insanity.
The trial is expected to take up to two weeks and will determine whether he will be sentenced to prison or sent to a state psychiatric facility.