In the years since he began working at FNC as host of its "Fox News Sunday" program, Chris Wallace has come to realize he was wrong for earlier thinking that the elite media are politically neutral.

"When I was in the mainstream media, when I was working at NBC and ABC [...] I thought we were fair and balanced. But since coming to Fox four and a half years ago, I have come to see things a little differently. And I, in fact, do believe there is a bias in the mainstream media and that is something I was only able to understand when I was outside of it," Wallace said in an interview with a Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts newspaper.

Even if you don't believe Fox is objective, you should be glad it's out there, Wallace added, if only for pluralism reasons:

"And whether you like Fox News or don't like it, it seems to me that it is a healthy development if only because it creates another viewpoint and some competition for the mainstream media and another place where people can get information, and by comparison check out whether they are getting the full story."

Some other interesting tidbits:

• Working for FNC and keeping his new balanced attitude toward politics has made him break up more than his share of dinner party conversations among the liberal Martha's Vineyard crowd
• His Fox colleagues Brit Hume and Juan Williams do not have grudges against each other despite how it may seem otherwise
• Like most big media types, Wallace is a blog addict, although he does worry about people insulating themselves too much by reading only ideologically similar web sites

The entire article is here. It's a good read.

Hat tip: TVNewser, which on a related note has a post up about some "Fox and Friends" producers who engaged in some apparent fauxtography to attack New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steve Reddicliffe for a piece Steinberg wrote which tried (for the umpteenth time) to insist that CNN and MSNBC are catching up to Fox in the ratings.

Update 15:24. The F&F story is outraging the leftysphere which isn't interesting in itself until you realize that this same bunch wasn't particularly interested in any of the anti-Iraq war fauxtography earlier.

—Matthew Sheffield is the creator of NewsBusters and its Executive Editor.