Mediaite’s Most Influential in News Media 2023
25. Charlamagne tha God
Radio Hall of Famer Charlamagne tha God kept popping up in headlines throughout the year, both for his own commentary and his interviews from the worlds of entertainment, sports, and politics. As one of the hosts of the nationally-syndicated show The Breakfast Club, he reaches millions of listeners — many of whom are in the advertiser-coveted younger demographic – every month on the radio, the show’s BET simulcast, and YouTube channel. While Charlamagne certainly has his own political views, he doesn’t shy away from throwing rhetorical punches at his own side and he’s conducted interviews with politicians of all partisan stripes. His stint guest-hosting Comedy Central’s The Daily Show included both the expected funny quips but also a segment where he grilled Nancy Mace about the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Trump’s legal troubles. His interview with former South Carolina Gov. and GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley drew praise for its in-depth discussion of serious topics and respectful debate. Charlamagne was a household name before this year, but he only expanded his large audience in a breakout 2023 for the multi-platform star.
24. Joe Rogan
In his fourth year on the list, perhaps no one represents the power of new media more than Joe Rogan. The Joe Rogan Experience remains the most popular podcast on Spotify, nearly four years after Rogan struck an eye-popping $200 million deal with the streaming service. 2023 saw Rogan continue to sit down with some of the biggest figures in the world, including a memorable interview with Elon Musk. Naturally, Rogan sparked controversy this year. His questionable comments about Jewish people and money landed him in hot water and earned him a rebuke from the ADL, which accused him of promoting anti-Semitic tropes. Once again, Rogan weathered the storm, holding onto his massive audience. Rogan’s popularity on the perhaps-too-online-right was highlighted when Vivek Ramaswamy kicked off a Republican debate by trashing NBC’s moderators and declaring the event should have been hosted by Rogan. “We’d have 10 times the viewership,” Ramaswamy declared. It was another cringe moment for the attention-seeking presidential candidate, but he might not have been wrong about the viewers.
23. Greg Gutfeld
Greg Gutfeld is among the most-watched people on Fox News. That means he’s among the most-watched people in all of television. That’s thanks to both his perch on panel show The Five, the top-rated show on cable news in 2023, and Gutfeld!, Fox’s iteration of a late night show. In 2023, Gutfeld only expanded his visibility on Fox — the ouster of Tucker Carlson and resulting schedule shakeup moved Gutfeld! from 11 p.m. to 10 p.m. That said, Gutfeld dropped down the list this year. That’s because the Fox News funnyman had a hard time keeping his foot out of his mouth — often veering into extreme rhetoric. In 2023, Gutfeld called for civil war, attacked multiple former colleagues, suggested that Palestinians around the world had advance knowledge of the October 7 Hamas attacks, and was apparently so hard to work with that one of his co-hosts called it quits. Gutfeld was even called out by the Auschwitz Museum over comments he made about the Holocaust. But Gutfeld would likely tell you he is often being taken too literally by dorky media folks like us… that much of what he says is intended as satire. And he may be right. Gutfeld’s casual style and attention grabbing commentary is working, with two of his shows — Gutfeld! and The Five — routinely dominating cable news ratings, and Gutfeld dubbing himself as the “king of late night.”
22. Pat McAfee
Pat McAfee stunned the sports world when he got out of his massive deal with FanDuel to bring The Pat McAfee Show to ESPN. With the deal, McAfee became ESPN’s highest-paid talent – even trumping Stephen A. Smith. Though many feared the ESPN deal would fundamentally change the show, McAfee and his crew maintained the candid, unfiltered commentary that endeared it to millions when it still aired exclusively on YouTube. Under the ESPN fold, McAfee now appears on the network nearly every day of the week thanks to the show and his role on College GameDay every Saturday. He also regularly appears on First Take with Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe. By joining ESPN, McAfee also brought with him his exclusive access to a lineup of special guests, including New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Alabama football coach Nick Saban. But McAfee’s influence extends beyond just sports. He is a cultural commentator too — and when he talks, his fans listen.
21. The War Reporters
As foreign policy took center stage in 2023, with two major conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and Hamas and Israel dominating news coverage, so too did news media’s most well-respected war correspondents. There are many, many brave journalists who report from war zones and risk their lives to report on some of the most tragic and horrific events on the planet – not to mention those based inside war zones like the brave Palestinian journalists — like Motaz Azaiza, who delivers news from inside Gaza to more than 17 million followers on Instagram, and Plestia Alaqad, who has more than 4.5 million — and those in Ukraine who are reporting in the face of the unprecedented dangers of modern conflict. On the major cable news networks, three reporters stood out this year: CNN’s Clarissa Ward, NBC’s Richard Engel, and Fox News’s Trey Yingst.
As CNN’s chief international correspondent, Ward’s two decades of reporting around the world from conflict zones like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine have made her an indispensable voice at a time of international turmoil. Ward, like many other foreign correspondents this year, spent much of her year in Ukraine reporting on the brutal Russian invasion and the Ukrainian’s efforts to repel it. In September, Ward won the Emmy for outstanding news coverage for her Ukraine war reporting.
Since October 7, she has spent her time in Israel reporting on the ongoing conflict there, and in December became the first Western journalist to enter Gaza without an IDF escort, giving CNN viewers a rare glimpse of the carnage unfolding inside the densely-packed enclave.
NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, who turned 50 this year, is a veteran war reporter who has covered everything from the war in Iraq to the Arab Spring to the civil war in Syria – where Engel was kidnapped in 2013.
Known for his calming on-air presence, Engel is also always quick to highlight the human side of every story he tells and doesn’t shy away from painstaking details while reporting from conflict zones — no matter how brutal they may be. This year Engel went back to Baghdad some 20 years after first reporting from there and visited one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces that is now an American University.
Trey Yingst, at just 30, emerged as one of the primary faces covering war this year. As Fox News’s foreign correspondent stationed in Israel, Yingst lives in Tel Aviv and became a ubiquitous presence on Fox thanks to his impressive reporting on the ground. He’s also one of the few international journalists with regular contacts inside Gaza – having gone deep inside the territory with Hamas in 2019.
20. Piers Morgan
Piers Morgan emerged in 2023 as a formidable force. It was an unlikely development. After all, Morgan is at the helm of Piers Morgan Uncensored, a show on TalkTV, which was launched just last year by Rupert Murdoch as the UK’s answer to Fox. The upstart news network has floundered in the ratings and its hosts remain mostly unknown – with the exception of Morgan, who in the first half of the year secured high ratings through exclusive interviews with public figures like Kanye West, Donald Trump and Cristiano Ronaldo (Morgan may have some of the best bookers in the business). Then came October and coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Interest in the show exploded as Morgan facilitated combative ideological debates between guests. That month alone Morgan added 450,000 subscribers and drew nearly 100 million views to his YouTube channel. An interview with Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef alone garnered a staggering 20 million views in two weeks. Morgan now boasts over two million subscribers on YouTube, an increase of over 30 percent in two months. Online, Morgan comfortably outguns mainstream media like the BBC and Guardian while also leaving competitors like GB News in the dust. Whatever TalkTV’s future, Morgan’s is secure — testament to his adaptability and finger-on-the-pulse understanding of media consumption today.
19. Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, Brian Kilmeade, and Lawrence Jones
What do you get when you combine local news, a zeal for the culture war and a few servings of pro-Trump comfort food? Top-rated morning show Fox & Friends, which entered its 25th year on air in 2023. The show continues to dominate the morning show competition for two decades running. With more than a million viewers tuning in on average, Fox & Friends beat every single show on CNN. Hosted by the triumvirate of Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade, the curvy couch got a little bigger this year with the addition of Lawrence Jones, who was added as fourth co-host. The curious tweak to a winning formula had some inside the industry questioning whether Fox was seeking to neuter what has become the best part of the show: Steve Doocy upsetting his co-host’s apparently unwavering defenses of Donald Trump. Doocy and Kilmeade (who himself occasionally challenges GOP orthodoxies) repeatedly clashed this year on Trump’s legal peril and the attempt to impeach President Joe Biden. That tension might be kryptonite for a broadcast network morning show that’s supposed to be all smiles, but not so for Fox & Friends — which stays lively and in the headlines all year long.
18. Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing
Less than a decade into its existence, Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing’s Daily Wire has become one of the most influential media organizations in the country. Period. With Shapiro as the face of the Daily Wire and Boreing as the man behind the curtain, it has by sheer force of will made itself ubiquitous. While Boreing has presided over the company’s ambitious expansion into the entertainment sphere with its own streaming app and other ventures (the Daily Wire sells razors now), Shapiro has stayed in the headlines and driven news cycles by engaging in substantive battles with prominent foes both foreign (Tucker Carlson) and domestic (Candace Owens). The Daily Wire isn’t just one of the most popular outlets on Facebook, it’s also built a massive audience on YouTube and beyond. The true tell of the pair’s growing influence is the fact that the Daily Wire is no longer fighting for its slice of the pie within conservative media, but doling out slices of its own to its various high-profile personalities.
17. George Stephanopoulos
George Stephanopoulos remains one of the most influential and respected names in news in no small part thanks to his perch on the top of two of the most important news shows in the country: Good Morning America, and Sunday politics talk show This Week. Stephanopoulos, former senior advisor to President Clinton, has hosted This Week for two decades, and in that time made the show a destination for the biggest names in politics. He pairs fascinating panel discussions with hard-hitting interviews, this year sitting down with everyone from Steve Scalise to Benjamin Netanyahu. His pivotal interview with convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried ended up playing a big role in the disgraced FTX founder’s trial. Stephanopoulos also inked a deal for a new book this year, that’s set to publish in early 2024. The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis, is said to include “a first-ever account of Jan. 6, 2021, from the staff inside the Situation Room.” While Stephanopoulos seems to particularly get under the skin of Republicans on his show, pundits and political leaders across the aisle listen to him, and 2024 could prove to be one of his biggest years yet in the political arena.
16. Joe Kahn and Sally Buzbee
Joe Kahn and Sally Buzbee, the executive editors of The New York Times and The Washington Post respectively, are two of the most powerful people in American media today, even if they aren’t household names themselves. These two newsroom leaders have the power to shape the political discourse in the U.S. in a way few other individuals can. Both print and digital journalism are under fire from decreasing ad revenue, rapidly shifting technology, and rising alternative media competition, but the Times and the Post remain two of the country’s most prestigious legacy newspapers. Whether it’s breaking news reported by their teams of reporters around the globe or a column by one of their opinion commentators, what they publish sets trends and shapes the coverage of the rest of the media industry. The Times remains a top-five news site globally, with some 642 million visits in October. The Post has a smaller reach, with some 155 million visits in the same month, but remains the source for political news in the nation’s capital. Buzbee played a major role in the Post’s in-depth report on the impact of AR-15’s in America’s mass shooting epidemic, not just approving the project behind the scenes but also writing an article to Post readers explaining how the staff decided to publish some of the graphic photos that had never been shared publicly before. Critically important, Buzbee noted, was that all their reporting was done with the full knowledge and consent of the surviving victims and family members of those who did not survive. Bottom line, many, many people on this list start their day reading the writing and reporting that these two chose to highlight.
