The first year of Donald Trump's administration — where Twitter tirades often stand in for policy statements — has delivered a steady diet of chaos for the New York media. And the figures who lead it — TV news anchors and executives, late night's political satirists and comic relievers — will never be the same. Many have blamed or, depending on your point of view, credited the thrice-married Trump with spurring the #MeToo reckoning that has toppled a succession of household names, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer chief among them, and led to the elevation — hard-earned and viewership-validated — of Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb at NBC's Today and Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell at CBS This Morning. The Trump administration has also made outspoken advocates of John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah, whose late-night programs incisively skewer its hypocrisies and blunders. And it has renewed the industry's commitment to fearless shoe-leather reporting on every channel, page and portal. The Hollywood Reporter's eighth annual list of the media's top players and teams salutes the men and women who, by speaking truth to power, garner plenty of their own.
Profiles written by Seth Abramovitch, Jeremy Barr, Eriq Gardner, Marisa Guthrie, Natalie Jarvey, Michael O'Connell, Lacey Rose, Bryn Elise Sandberg, Tatiana Siegel and Rebecca Sun.