Former Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace Describes How Bad It Was to Work at Fox News

“I can certainly understand where somebody would say, ‘Gee, you were a slow learner, Chris.’”

Pool/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Timesformer Fox News anchor Chris Wallace explained his decision to leave the conservative network last December after 18 years. “Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox,” Wallace told media correspondent Michael Grynbaum. “And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on.”

Wallace brought to Fox News a certain degree of journalistic gravitas throughout his tenure. Moderating presidential debates and hosting the network’s flagship political talk show “Fox News Sunday,” he was considered a more middle-of-the-road presence. Especially in contrast with his colleagues, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, who became more stridently right-wing during the years of Donald Trump’s presidency. “I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox,” Wallace said in his interview.

“Some people might have drawn the line earlier, or at a different point,” he acknowledged. “I think Fox has changed over the course of the last year and a half. But I can certainly understand where somebody would say, ‘Gee, you were a slow learner, Chris.’”

The 74-year-old anchor did not retire from journalism, however, but instead moved to rival network CNN, where his new daily talk show, “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” will debut this coming week. As the Times explains:

But Mr. Wallace also acknowledged that he felt a shift at Fox News in the months after Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020—a period when the channel ended its 7 p.m. newscast, fired the political editor who helped project a Trump loss in Arizona on election night and promoted hosts like Mr. Carlson who downplayed the Jan. 6 riot.

He confirmed reports that he was so alarmed by Mr. Carlson’s documentary “Patriot Purge” — which falsely suggested the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a “false flag” operation intended to demonize conservatives—that he complained directly to Fox News management.

Not that it seemed to have mattered much. “I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” Wallace said. “But when people start to question the truth—Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection?—I found that unsustainable.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate