WALLACE TO LEAVE FOX FOR NEW CNN SERVICE
Veteran anchor Chris Wallace has left Fox News after 18 years for CNN, dealing a significant blow to Fox’s news operation at a time that it has been overshadowed by the network’s opinion side.
Wallace delivered the surprising news that he was leaving at the end of the “Fox News Sunday” show he moderates, and within two hours CNN announced he was joining its new streaming service as an anchor. CNN+ is expected to debut in early 2022.
“It is the last time, and I say this with real sadness, we will meet like this,” Wallace, who is 74, said on his show, which airs on the Fox network and is later rerun on Fox News Channel. “Eighteen years ago, the bosses here at Fox promised me they would never interfere with a guest I booked or a question I asked. And they kept that promise.”
Wallace, who has worked at ABC and NBC, was lured to Fox by the late Roger Ailes with the promise of his own Sunday show. Methodical and never showy — in contrast to his father Mike, the “60 Minutes” reporter — Chris Wallace was known for his willingness to ask hard questions of all guests no matter their politics.
He was the first Fox News personality to moderate a presidential debate, doing it in 2016 and 2020.
“He is the most tenacious interviewer in the television business, based on intense preparation and plain old persistence,” said Howard Kurtz, host of Fox’s “Media Buzz.” “He has the kind of seasoned judgment that only comes from so many years of covering political issues and he may be the best debate moderator ever.”
Kurtz said it was “a major loss for Fox News, no question about it.”
Until a successor is named, Fox said Wallace will be replaced by a rotating series of guest anchors.
Wallace had grown privately frustrated with the overall tenor at Fox, where conservative opinion hosts have been elevated and amplified, particularly after the network’s ratings took a brief hit following the 2020 election.
The network ousted two news executives involved in the controversial — but correct — declaration on election night that Democrat Joe Biden had won in Arizona, a call that infuriated Republican Donald Trump.
Wallace had expressed his concern about the opinion programming to Fox executives multiple times, including recently after Tucker Carlson’s documentary on the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, “Patriot Purge,” aired on Fox’s streaming service. Two Fox News contributors, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, cited that program in choosing to quit the network.