Chris Wallace

Chris Wallace
Interviewing a guest on Fox News Sunday
Born	(1947-10-12) October 12, 1947 Chicago, Illinois, United States
Occupation	Host of Fox News Sunday (Fox)
Website	Biography on FoxNews.com

Christopher "Chris" Wallace (born October 12, 1947) is an American journalist propagandist, currently the host of Fox News Sunday. During his career he has interviewed national and international political leaders including U.S. Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, and former Mexican President Vicente Fox. Wallace has also interviewed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Senator (now Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton, Senator John McCain and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wallace has won three Emmy Awards, the Dupont-Columbia Silver Baton Award, and a Peabody Award. Wallace has been with Fox News since 2003. As a previous moderator of Meet the Press, Wallace is the only person to date to have served as host/moderator of more than one of the major Sunday political talk shows.

Early life and 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 Kaplan. 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 at the same time as 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, using his one phone call to sign 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. For a time in the early 1970s, he worked for Chicago CBS owned-and-operated station WBBM-TV.

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 for NBC News, 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 Ronald Reagan's news conference in March 1987, when Reagan admitted to dealing arms for hostages. During his questioning, Wallace challenged Reagan 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?"

Wallace left NBC in 1989 for ABC. At ABC News, 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 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 what critics cite as bias in the 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." 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.

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 Leonard's death in 1994, the father and son moved even closer together. Mike Wallace remarks that they talk at least once a week.

Particular broadcasts

News-making Clinton interview

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.

Wallace asked Clinton, "Why didn't you do more to put Osama and Al Qaeda out of business when you were president?" Clinton responded by detailing what he called his administration's "comprehensive anti-terror operation". 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 (Counter-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."

Wallace's statement was disputed by Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog organization, that criticizes what it describes as "conservative misinformation in the U.S. media". The organization stated that, having reviewed "dozens of interviews ... with senior Bush aides", it had 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. As to Al Qaeda and the war on terror generally, the Media Matters report stated that Wallace had challenged only one Bush administration official, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, about the war on terror and a perceived failure to pursue the threat of Al Qaeda, by saying, "Mr. Secretary, it sure sounds like fighting terrorism was not a top priority." Brit Hume of Fox News cited the same 2004 interview as evidence of Wallace's independent reporting.

Registered Democrat

On October 11, 2006, The Washington Post revealed that 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. He maintained he had voted for candidates from both major parties in the past.

See also

• Sunday morning talk shows

External links

• Fox News biography
• Transcript of Clinton interview
• Transcript of Follow-up on Clinton interview
• Chris Wallace, Caught Off Balance?
• Transcript of Rice interview
• Son of '60 Minutes' icon makes his own mark at Fox News
• Wallace: 'Nightline' tribute had an agenda
• The Confederate Flag: "A Controversial Symbol" Transcript of a Nightline program hosted by Chris Wallace.
• NNDB Profile
• [1] Article "Chris Wallace: Mike Wallace Has 'Lost It'"