To his credit, Wallace, who is widely admired for his relentless interviews, never directly defended Fox’s cultish para-journalism when grilled about it. But to his discredit he has rarely if ever publicly criticized his network’s propagandistic nuttiness. Instead, he would retreat to a fortified position to claim there was a news-opinion divide at Fox — similar to the news-opinion divide at newspapers — that allowed him, a “hard news” guy, to recuse himself from all the wacky opinion aired on his network. He did so as recently as early November in a Financial Times interview with Matthew Garrahan. “I am only responsible for and only have control over my piece of real estate,” Wallace said. (Not exactly the kind of full-throated defense of his employer the Fox PR folks might have hoped for.) “Why on earth would I share any concerns I have about Fox News with the readers of the Financial Times?”
The likely reason, reader, was that he was ashamed of Fox and what it had come to stand for but had become too invested in the network after 18 years to say anything that might draw the wrath of its leader, Rupert Murdoch, or his heir apparent, son Lachlan Murdoch. The liberal Twitterverse celebrated Wallace’s defection Sunday, imagining that it would somehow injure Fox. Sure, Fox has a 24- to 72-hour period of bad publicity to deal with, but by next weekend there will be a replacement host for Wallace on Fox News Sunday and by February, few viewers will remember Wallace at all. Dedicated Fox-haters (you know who you are) think that if they only drive off the channel’s top advertisers with boycotts, edit together enough supercuts of Fox’s lowest programming, or hector Tucker Carlson one more time, the channel that Rupert Murdoch built will come toppling down. But Fox is too profitable and its owner too tenacious to surrender. It would be easier to rid the world of Microsoft Windows than it would be to eradicate Fox.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member