Chris Wallace (journalist)

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Chris Wallace during a Fox News broadcast.
Chris Wallace during a Fox News broadcast.

Chris Wallace (born October 12, 1947) is an American journalist, currently the host of Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. During his career he has interviewed numerous news makers including former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, Mexican President Vicente Fox, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Senator Hillary Clinton, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. [1] During his career, Wallace has won three Emmy Awards, the Dupont-Columbia Silver Baton Award, and a Peabody Award. Wallace has been with Fox News since 2003.

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[edit] Early career

Wallace was born in Chicago, Illinois. He is the son of Mike Wallace, the longtime reporter for 60 Minutes on CBS, and Norma Kaphan. His parents divorced when he was one year old, and he grew up with his stepfather Bill Leonard, eventually CBS News President. He only developed a relationship with his biological father when he reached the age of 14. Leonard gave him early exposure to political journalism, hiring him as an assistant to Walter Cronkite at the 1964 Republican National Convention.

Wallace attended Harvard University, where he was a classmate of Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones. He first reported news on air for WHRB, the student radio station at Harvard College. He memorably covered the 1969 occupation of University Hall by students and was detained by Cambridge police, signing off a report from Cambridge City Jail.

Although accepted at Harvard Law School, Wallace instead took a job with the Boston Globe. He says he realized he wanted to move to television when he noticed all the reporters at the 1972 political conventions were watching the proceedings on TV, instead of in person.

Wallace began his network journalism career with NBC in 1975, where he stayed for 14 years, as a reporter with WNBC-TV in New York City. Wallace then transferred to NBC's Washington bureau as a political correspondent, and later served as Washington co-anchor for the Today show in 1982. He also served as chief White House correspondent (1982-89), moderator of Meet the Press (1987-88), and anchor of the Sunday edition of NBC Nightly News. Wallace's confrontational style was evident during President Reagan's news conference in March 1987, when Reagan admitted to dealing arms for hostages. During his questioning, Wallace challenged the President by citing previous occasions on which the President denied trading arms for hostages, "when you knew that wasn't true. Why did you say that?" An obviously flustered Reagan responded by fairly growling "Chris ..." through his teeth.[citation needed]

Wallace left NBC in 1989 for ABC. At ABC, Wallace was the senior correspondent for Primetime Thursday and occasionally hosted Nightline. During the first Gulf War in 1991, he reported from Tel Aviv on the Iraqi Scud missiles attacks. At the time, the Israeli Government did not want to advertise where the Scuds landed, in order to prevent the Iraqis from making adjustments to their launchers. On one episode of Nightline, Wallace started describing the location in Tel Aviv where a Scud missile landed. Nightline's host Ted Koppel cut him off, respecting Israeli national security needs.

After another 14 years at ABC Wallace left in 2003 to join Fox. He has remarked in the past that his work at Fox opened his eyes to the bias of the so called mainstream press. Wallace has stated, "Fox News wouldn't exist if it weren't for this kind of stuff going on in the mainstream media. That's why people are fed up with that and want the antidote to it because they get it and they've gotten it for years - the so-called bias in the objective press."[2] However, he has stated that he is non partisan. He currently hosts Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, and is an occasional guest on the Howie Carr show on Boston's WRKO.

[edit] Relationship with Father

Despite Wallace's blood relationship with his father Mike, both men recognize that his stepfather, Bill Leonard, had far more of an impact on his life than his biological father. Chris Wallace first developed a relationship with his father in his teens, after his older brother Peter died climbing a mountain in Greece. After the 1994 death of Leonard, the father and son moved even closer together. Mike Wallace remarks that they talk at least once a week.[3] Recently, some friction has developed in between Wallace and his father. Chris explained a negative comment his father made about President Bush, by stating "he's lost it ... we’re going to have a competence hearing pretty soon." When asked again Wallace repeated his answer and stated he was not joking.[4]

[edit] Bill Clinton interview
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Clinton and Wallace debate interview points.
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Clinton and Wallace debate interview points.

Wallace received considerable attention for an interview that he conducted with former President Bill Clinton that aired on September 24, 2006 on Fox News Sunday. Clinton and Fox News had agreed in advance that half the time would be devoted to the Clinton Global Initiative and half to any other subjects that Wallace wanted to raise. [5]

Wallace asked Clinton, "Why didn't you do more to put [Osama] bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president?" Clinton responded by detailing what he called his administration's "comprehensive anti-terror operation" and saying "at least I tried". He then accused Wallace and Fox News of bias:

So you did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me. ... It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, "Why didn't you do anything about the [bombing of the USS] Cole?" I want to know how many you asked, "Why did you fire [anti-terrorism expert] Dick Clarke?"

In response to Clinton's questions, Wallace said that Fox News Sunday had asked Bush administration officials "plenty of questions", and he added, "With Iraq and Afghanistan, there's plenty of stuff to ask." [6]

Media Matters for America, a progressive web-based organization that reports and criticizes what it describes as "conservative misinformation in the U.S. media" [7], disputed Wallace's statement. [8] It reviewed "dozens of interviews ... with senior Bush aides" and found only one (a 2004 interview with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) in which Wallace raised the "basic charge that, pre-9-11 ... this government, the Bush administration, largely ignored the threat from Al Qaeda," adding, "Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a top priority." [9] The organization found no interviews in which Wallace or his predecessor, Tony Snow, had asked a Bush administration official about the treatment of Clarke or about the lack of response to the Cole bombing.

A response from Brit Hume of FOX News cited the same interview with Donald Rumsfeld as evidence that Wallace has asked similar questions of a senior Bush administration official. Hume also stated:

Chris Wallace's "FOX News Sunday" interview with Bill Clinton was one of six TV appearances the former president made last week. But despite Mr. Clinton's highly publicized objections to the recent ABC docudrama about 9/11, no one other than Wallace asked him about the aggressiveness of his pursuit of Osama bin Laden.[10]

On October 15, Wallace interviewed the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Because he had told Clinton that his questions were prompted in part by emailed requests, some liberals organized campaigns to email Wallace a request that he ask Rice about the Bush administration's lack of response to the Cole bombing. One organization, the Center for American Progress, said that 20,000 such emails had been sent. [11] Nevertheless, Wallace did not ask Rice about the Cole bombing.[12]

[edit] Registered Democrat

On October 11, 2006 The Washington Post revealed that Chris Wallace had been a registered Democrat for more than two decades. Wallace explained his party affiliation in terms of pragmatism-insisting that being a Democrat is the only feasible means of participating in the political process in heavily-Democratic Washington D.C.-and maintained that he had voted for candidates from both major parties in the past. [1]

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ FOX News
  2. ^ NewMax
  3. ^ Dallas Morning News
  4. ^ NewsMax
  5. ^ FOX News
  6. ^ FOX News
  7. ^ Media Matters
  8. ^ Media Matters
  9. ^ FOX News
  10. ^ Special Report w/Brit Hume, "Republican Sen. George Allen Dogged by Racism Accusations", Septembe 26, 2006
  11. ^ "Think Progress", October 15, 2006
  12. ^ "Transcript: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 'FNS'"
Preceded by:
Tony Snow		 Fox News Sunday Anchor
2003 – present		 Succeeded by:
incumbent
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