Chris Wallace (Journalist)
Chris Wallace (b. October 12, 1947) is a conservative American journalist, currently the host of Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Wallace has been with Fox News since 2003.
Wallace was born in Chicago. 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 in his teens, after his older brother Peter died climbing a mountain in Greece.[1]
Leonard gave him early exposure to political journalism, hiring him as a gofer for 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 radical 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 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 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, Chris Wallace 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.
He currently hosts Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, and is an occasional guest on the Howie Carr show on Boston's WRKO.
During his career, Wallace has won three Emmy Awards, the Dupont-Columbia Silver Baton Award, and a Peabody Award. Wallace's book Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage was published in September 2004.
Books
- Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage