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Journalistic EARTHQUAKE: Chris Wallace quits Fox News Channel “immediately” for CNN’s streaming service

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Last week NBC’s Brian Williams announced his retirement from NBC News. It was a surprise but not an earthquake.

In the news biz, Chris Wallace created an earthquake. He announced at the end of his Sunday program that “effective immediately” he was leaving Fox News to move on to other ventures. Then, right after that, it was announced that Wallace was leaving Fox News to become a key player in CNN’s new streaming service, CNN+.

Why is it the equivilent of an earthquake?

  • As more an more news consumers are spending their time streaming (and causing sleepless nights for some broadcast network executives) bigwigs are putting big bucks into news streaming packages.
  • Chris Wallace is one of the most durable and respected “old school” journalism practioners. The kind of equal-opportunity offender questioning he does is indicative of the journalism I learned at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He is not only a journalistic descendent of his late dad Mike Wallace, but of 20th century and early 21st century news broadcasters. In terms of journalistic integrity, skills, and reputation. On Fox News he was a journalistic giraffe towering over journalistic humming birds.
  • Fox News has lost a figure that kept it from being dismissed as a news service that has evolved into a propoaganda network, spreading stores at varience with the facts (i.e. inaccurate, unfounded or based on lies), with anchors who seemingly can’t put aside ideology. There will be no more “Really? What about Chris Wallace” rebuttal line.
  • Fox News will likely be pushed to put someone in who is more compatible with the network’s ideological slant. On the other hand, it may try to find someone who can fit the Chris Wallace mode, but it’s hard imaging many real journalists outside of Fox will clamor to be on the network.
  • Wallace’s reputation and the big role that awaits him at CNN+ is likely to give the streaming service a huge boost.

    • The Los Angeles Times:

    Chris Wallace, the longtime Washington journalist, announced his departure from Fox News Channel at the end of his weekly program Sunday, and will head to CNN’s upcoming streaming service.

    Wallace, whose contract at Fox News ends this month, was considered the most even-handed journalist at the conservative-leaning Fox News. An 18-year veteran of the channel, he was the anchor of its Sunday roundtable show “Fox News Sunday.”

    “Eighteen years ago, the bosses here at Fox promised me they would never interfere with a guest I booked or a question I asked,” Wallace said on his program. “And they kept that promise. I have been free to report to the best of my ability, to cover the stories I think are important, to hold our country’s leaders to account. It’s been a great ride.”

    Wallace has long said he was immune to the right-wing rhetoric of Fox News commentators and never publicly criticized the organization. There have been reports that he was among the journalists in the Washington bureau who expressed concerns about Tucker Carlson’s documentary series about the Jan. 6 insurrection, which pushed a conspiracy theory that suggested government involvement.

    Two Washington-based contributors, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, quit Fox News over the Carlson programs, which streamed on Fox Nation.

    But according to a Fox News representative, Wallace is leaving because he has the desire to try something new.

    CNN:

    Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, one of the few high-profile news personalities who retained a reputation of integrity as the channel he worked for leaned hard into right-wing and conspiratorial programming, announced Sunday that he is departing the network and joining CNN+ to host a weekday show.

    Wallace made the stunning announcement of his departure from Fox News at the end of “Fox News Sunday,” the channel’s flagship weekly program that he has moderated since 2003.

    “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.

    Wallace described his time at Fox News as a “great ride.” He said that after nearly two decades he was “ready for a new adventure.”
    Shortly after his announcement, CNN announced that Wallace will join CNN+, the news organization’s streaming product launching in early 2022, to host a show featuring interviews with newsmakers “across politics, business, sports and culture.”
    “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,” Wallace said in a statement.

    Fox News said that it will rotate hosts on “Fox News Sunday” until a permanent host is named.

    Fox touted Wallace’s “long-term contract” renewal back in September 2017. That contract was expiring this year, and Wallace decided he didn’t want to renew, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

    Wallace’s announcement was as surprising and abrupt as Shepard Smith’s sign-off from Fox in 2019. Both anchors shared their decisions at the end of a telecast and signed off permanently. But Smith quit in the middle of a long-term contract while Wallace’s deal was coming due.

    Wallace is known for his tough, but fair, questioning of both Democratic and Republican politicians. His reputation for grilling members of both parties made him well-respected in journalistic circles, but often irked the Fox News audience which showed immense loyalty to former President Donald Trump. That was especially true when Wallace called out Trump directly, including when he said that the former president “engaged in the most direct, sustained assault on the free press in our history.”

    In recent years, Fox News, which always did tilt toward the right, has transformed itself into a hyper-partisan, right-wing talk network that regularly pushes conspiracy theories on a wide variety of topics. Even many of the network’s so-called “straight news” anchors have abandoned any pretense of impartiality.

    Fox News’ top host, Tucker Carlson, has drawn extraordinary criticism for producing a special entertaining the false notion that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was a “false flag” orchestrated by the federal government. Carlson has also trafficked in anti-vaccine rhetoric and pushed the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory on his show.