Mediaite’s Most Influential in News Media 2021
The year started with an attack on the U.S. Capitol. It’s ending with the emergence of a frightening new Covid variant. And in between, 2021 was a very different year in the news.
It was different largely because Donald Trump, for most of the year, was not the president. While he reestablished himself as the dominant figure in the Republican Party, no longer was much of the country tuned to his every move — particularly with his Twitter account having been shuttered. The Trump show went from 24/7 to the occasional one-hour special.
And that meant 24-hour news outlets had to completely reinvent themselves. No longer was the White House going to solve all of their programming problems. News had to be found outside the Beltway.
There was still plenty going on in the world. The pandemic remained a major storyline in 2021. In the early part of the year, it was all about the vaccine rollout. The latter half, meanwhile, has been all about the Delta and Omicron waves.
Then, there was the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The early days of the pullout resulted in widespread violence, including a suicide bombing at Kabul airport. The scramble to get U.S. citizens out of the country resulted in some of the most dramatic, harrowing news coverage in ages — where journalists put themselves in serious peril to bring viewers back home the story.
Indeed, it was a year of change on cable news. And a year in which top reporters did some truly must-watch work, key opinion makers set a brand new agenda, and lead executives made crucial decisions to the future of their networks.
Today, we recognize the industry’s 75 biggest movers and shakers in 2021. A quick explainer on how we arrived at our final list. There are a variety of factors that we take into account when evaluating someone’s clout. A few of the metrics are tangible, like TV ratings, social media followings, engagement. Those are all easily measurable. Some of the other criteria we use are harder to define, but we know it when we see it. Is there insider buzz surrounding a particular media figure? Do they have a direct line to the president? Are they the talk of their rivals? Are they being courted by other outlets?
Typically, we commemorate our list with an industry blowout in New York featuring the biggest stars in the business. While Covid has kept us from holding this event for the moment, we’re excited to share that we plan to celebrate our honorees soon!
With that, the writers and editors of Mediaite are proud to present our 2021 selections for the Most Influential in News Media.
This list was written by Joe DePaolo, Colby Hall, Leia Idliby, Tommy Christopher, Brittany Lewis, Caleb Howe, Katherine Huggins, Sarah Rumpf, Aidan McLaughlin, Rudy Takala, Ken Meyer, Kipp Jones, Alex Griffing, Jackson Richman, and Michael Luciano.
75. Erik Wemple
Erik Wemple doesn’t give a shit, and we mean that in the most complimentary way possible. The Washington Post media critic hasn’t endeared himself to CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and a slew of other outlets thanks to his almost pathological compulsion to call out their screw-ups. He’s even put his own publication on blast. That is to say, he’s everything a media critic should be. Perhaps his most memorable moment of 2021 came during an appearance on CNN’s Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter. Unprompted, Wemple brought up the numerous “love-a-thon interviews” between Chris Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo on the network, made possible by the fact that CNN waived its conflict-of-interest policy in those instances. “They suspended the conflict-of-interest rule for Chris Cuomo for those interviews, yet all of a sudden they’ve enforced it again now that Andrew Cuomo is in the midst of a historic scandal in the Albany statehouse,” Wemple told Stelter. “It is a major black eye for this network.”
74. Mike Lindell
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
In an ideal world, Mike Lindell would not have vaulted to the forefront of our national discourse for a time. Alas, Shangri-La eludes us still. The CEO of My Ongoing Mental Health Crisis Pillow, who only a few years ago was little more than an infomercial curiosity, had a remarkably influential year. He was at the White House this year telling the president of the United States how he could remain in power after said president lost the 2020 election. In January, he was seen at White House carrying a piece of paper that read, in part, “martial law if necessary.” After that didn’t work out, Lindell hatched a harebrained theory about how Trump would be reinstated as president in August. That also did not work out but Lindell gained national notoriety for his documentary-style infomercials filled with often wacky, indefensible theories about how the election was stolen. Through it all, Lindell has remained a fixation of the media industry, and a troublemaker for conservative media: He has clashed with Fox News, and as Newsmax was left reeling from defamation lawsuits over its 2020 coverage, Lindell pushed them to such an extreme that a Newsmax anchor walked off the set in the middle of an interview.
73. Cenk Uygur
Joshua Blanchard/Getty Images
Cenk Uygur’s Young Turks empire operates far out of sight of cable news green rooms, in the wild west of YouTube. But the influence of his news outlet in setting the agenda for the progressive media is undeniable. Uygur, as well as popular hosts like Ana Kasparian, have turned TYT into a mighty digital media operation. While Uygur is known to flex his clout as a champion of the “fighting left,” he has also proven himself more than capable of holding liberals accountable whenever they shill out to corporations, prove beholden to the political mainstream, or drop the ball on the progressive agenda. In the early days of the Biden administration, Uygur pushed Democrats to implement a hike for the minimum wage. Since then, Uygur has called out progressive stalwarts slouching on the wage hike campaign or blinking in the fight for funding various social issues. Uygur accomplishes all of this without the help of what he derides as the “corporate media,” allowing for a freedom some cable news hosts might envy.
72. Andy McCarthy
The former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has emerged as probably the highest-profile conservative-leaning legal analyst in the country. His smart, sometimes contrarian legal commentary has allowed him to maintain media prominence, even in the post-Trump age. As a contributing editor for National Review and regular guest on Fox News, he has opined on topics ranging from the trials of Kyle Rittenhouse and Jussie Smollett, to the Biden administration’s decision to prosecute former Trump official Steve Bannon. Of course, that’s to say nothing of the Durham probe into Justice Department conduct in the Trump era, a years-old investigation that remains active even as the 2022 midterms begin. Expect McCarthy to remain a top legal voice for the media in 2022.
71. Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino
“When we come out of it, TV is going to be different,” Bill Hemmer told Mediaite in an April interview — referring to the Covid-19 pandemic. He did not know it at the time, but that assessment would turn out to be particularly true for his own network, where Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace announced in December that he would be moving to CNN. The departure means Hemmer and Perino move up the depth chart among the network’s top faces for hard news coverage — with the former even set to audition for Wallace’s gig in the coming weeks. In January the pair were named as hosts of America’s Newsroom from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m and they have delivered, with precisely the sort of news coverage that Fox boasts about when challenged on the overall direction of the network. Being at the helm of those key hours on the most-watched cable news network in America means Hemmer and Perino command a vast empire of real estate on the national news stage — and they’re winning over the Fox audience too. Their generally well-balanced program won an average of 1.5 million daily viewers for the year, a number likely to grow in the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections.
70. Jonathan Capehart
Jonathan Capehart wears many influential hats, among them Washington Post opinion writer and MSNBC anchor. The MSNBC program he hosts — The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart — is a sharp two-hour analysis of all the news out of Washington and beyond. Capehart also filled the liberal seat on PBS NewsHour that belonged to the esteemed Mark Shields during the show’s political commentary segment on Fridays. On top of that, he juggled specials beyond typical hosting duties. During Pride Month this year Capehart, who is gay, interviewed LGBTQ members of the Biden administration for a special, “Pride of the White House” that aired in primetime on Sunday night. In September, he showed off his interviewing chops when he pressed former Human Rights Campaign president Alphonso David on the group’s connection to embattled former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had resigned over sexual misconduct allegations.
69. Team Puck
Puck’s Matt Belloni. Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images.
Puck — a media company covering the intersection of Hollywood, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street — made a splash when it was launched early in 2021 by immediately snapping up heavy-hitting reporters. Dylan Byers quickly joined, as did Matthew Belloni. Tina Nguyen, Teddy Schleifer, Baratunde Thurston, Julia Ioffe, Peter Hamby, and William Cohan hopped on board to form an all-star staff. Puck is suddenly a must-read hub for commentary and analysis on a fleet of industries, thanks to a team of proper insiders. Byers’ reporting thus far has unearthed that cable news hopes to put Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez behind a news desk and that Joe Scarborough wants $1 million more than Rachel Maddow from MSNBC. Meanwhile, Belloni’s dispatches from Hollywood are worth the cost of admission alone (and it’s not cheap: subscriptions run $100 annually.) For reporting so good it feels privileged? Worth it.
68. Erin Burnett
Erin Burnett celebrated 10 years of her CNN show in 2021. A former financial analyst at Goldman Sachs and VP at CitiBank, Burnett started her journalism career covering business news at CNBC before becoming one of CNN’s most prominent hosts in 2011. For the last decade, Burnett has anchored OutFront, a smart, hour-long news program airing at 7 p.m. in prime time. In recent months, the interview-heavy show has regularly landed in third place behind Fox News Primetime and MSNBC’s Joy Reid, but maybe that is because Burnett is producing one of the most balanced shows on CNN. She also finished the year beating out Reid in the key 25-54 age demographic with 287,000 viewers to the MSNBC host’s 211,000. CNN boasts that Burnett has now topped her timeslot competition on MSNBC in that category for eight consecutive years.
67. Clay Travis
Clay Travis, the founder of the conservative sports site Outkick, had a monster year in 2021. Along with Buck Sexton, Travis was tapped to take over the most coveted piece of real estate in all of conservative media — the daily afternoon radio show which belonged to the late Rush Limbaugh. In just their second week on the air, Travis and Sexton scored a massive get — landing a newsmaking interview with former President Donald Trump. By appearing on the show so early in its run, the 45th president essentially gave the program his seal of approval, and Travis and Sexton haven’t looked back since. What’s more, Travis has become, without rival, the go-to voice for conservatives on issues where politics meet sports. The frequency and gravity of his Fox News appearances cranked up dramatically in 2021, and that’s no accident. That’s the result of an audience demanding to see more from a commentator they consider a star on the rise.
66. Jonathan Lemire
Jonathan Lemire landed two new gigs in 2021: He was named host of MSNBC’s Way Too Early (a big career win, if a massive loss for his circadian rhythm) as well as Politico’s White House bureau chief. The seasoned reporter, who rose to prominence covering the Trump administration for the Associated Press, has continued to dominate the beat as one the most influential members of the White House press corps. In addition to his new hosting duties, Lemire is a regular on MSNBC’s Morning Joe as well as on Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace, where he provides salient analysis of President Joe Biden as his administration reckons with the Covid-19 pandemic and more. Between breaking news and delivering analysis on presidential administrations, Lemire is apparently carving out time to write a new book (or so he tells his publisher). The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020 is slated for fall 2022. Expect it to be a must-read.
