Host Chris Wallace leaves Fox News after 18 years for CNN Plus

Chris Wallace is leaving Fox News to join CNN’s forthcoming streaming service, marking the departure of a respected journalist from the Rupert Murdoch-controlled network beloved by US conservatives.

“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-air during his Sunday morning news show.

“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”.

Wallace will host a show featuring interviews “across politics, business, sports and culture” for CNN Plus, the news company’s push into online streaming, which is set to launch early next year.

Explaining his departure, Wallace said: “I want to try something new, to go beyond politics to all the things I’m interested in”.

Wallace’s exit comes a month after two longtime Fox News commentators, Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, left in protest at a documentary by Fox star Tucker Carlson called Patriot Purge.

The series suggests that the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters might have been a “false flag” attack secretly carried out by US authorities wanting to discredit the country’s true “patriots”.

A Fox News representative said the network would rotate “star journalists” in Wallace’s Sunday slot until a permanent host was named. “We are extremely proud of our journalism and the stellar team that Chris Wallace was a part of for 18 years”, the company said.

Wallace has worked in journalism for five decades, first at the Boston Globe newspaper and then on television at NBC and ABC before he joined Fox in 2003. He has built a reputation for balanced interviews across the political spectrum and moderated US presidential election debates in 2016 and 2020.

When recently asked by the FT about Carlson casting doubt on the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines, Wallace said: “Why on earth would I share any concerns I have about Fox News with the readers of the Financial Times?”

“I am only responsible for and only have control over my piece of real estate”, he added, in an interview last month.

Hayes and Goldberg, explaining their own departure from Fox, called Carlson’s documentary “a collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering, riddled with factual inaccuracies, half-truths, deceptive imagery, and damning omissions”.

“With the release of Patriot Purge, we felt we could no longer do right as we see it and remain at Fox News”, they said.

Ratings at the big cable news networks, including CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, have all declined sharply as a news cycle previously fuelled by Donald Trump slowed under Joe Biden’s presidency.

Observers have questioned how the Murdoch family would position Fox News during a Biden administration. Fox chief Lachlan Murdoch in February said the company would not pivot politically. “We don’t need to go further right. We don’t believe America is further right . . . And we are obviously not going to pivot left”, he said.

Wallace’s move is a coup for CNN as it looks to build a streaming service for news, an effort Jason Kilar, chief executive of WarnerMedia, CNN’s parent company, has pursued as traditional television declines. Fox News in 2018 launched its own streaming service, Fox Nation, where Patriot Purge was aired.

Wallace said he looks forward to the “new freedom and flexibility streaming affords”.