On Chris Wallace

Yesterday, Chris Wallace announced he was leaving Fox News for CNN+, CNN’s streaming service.  It is reported that his Fox News contract was up, and he’s out of there.  As I noted when CNBC News Anchor Shepard Smith left Fox News in 2019, I place the highest credibility upon those willing to speak the truth when the truth is contrary to their own interest.  I accordingly considered Mr. Wallace’s approach on Fox News a particularly vital contribution to the ongoing cable news debate of national issues specifically because he was on Fox News, which generates its revenues by serving Trumplican sugar to an audience that laps it up.  I observed when noting Mr. Smith’s departure: 

“It is no surprise to the readers of these pages that I am generally in agreement with the sentiments expressed by the Morning Joe panel and the rest MSNBC lineup (although I’m occasionally surprised that they don’t asphyxiate themselves on their own hyperventilation); I enjoy the relish with which the majority of the CNN talking heads pursue [former President Donald Trump’s] falsehoods and inanities (although I wonder how they avoid drowning in their own antagonism); but I’m always acutely aware that no matter how sincerely these MSNBC and CNN commentators hold their views, they’re on those networks’ air because their employers’ business models in part involve inciting antipathy toward Mr. Trump and his cohort.  What made Mr. Smith different was the fact he was speaking to an audience that generally mostly strongly disagreed with the truth he offered.”

It also made Mr. Wallace different.  It has been reported that Mr. Wallace recently objected to Fox News leadership regarding the network’s airing of Patriot Purge, a 3-part series conducted by Fox News Commentator Tucker Carlson.  I have been aware without following the situation closely – I want to spend as little of my remaining life space as possible attending to Mr. Carlson, and to the reporting on Mr. Carlson’s pronouncements – that Patriot Purge seeks to rewrite the history of the January 6^th Capitol insurrection, and has been lampooned by credible fact checkers for boosting Trumplican propaganda.

Godspeed to Mr. Wallace in his new endeavors.  Although he is reported as leaving of his own volition, I doubt that the Murdoch Family and Fox News leadership care that much.

“The nationalization of the broad masses can never be achieved by half measures, by weakly emphasizing a so-called objective standpoint, but only by a ruthless and fanatically one-sided orientation toward the goal to be achieved.”

• Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf