The Right's Top 25 Journalists

In these times of bare-knuckle political partisanship, opposition to the Obama administration comes not only from Republican politicians and Tea Party activists, but also from a phalanx of journalists. Most of these men and women, who work in print, on air, and in the blogosphere, take some of the most effective aim at the Democrats. (A few of them, it should be stressed, work not in opposition to the administration but in pursuit of a broader conservative or libertarian ideal.) Their tenor is as varied as the mediums in which they work, and ranges from the sage and intellectual to the acrid and shrill. Some deploy humor, others rhetoric; some are measured, others obnoxious. Some are writers, anchors, or talk-show hosts, others editors and "curators." What unites them all, broadly, is their influence on the public debate, and their place on the political spectrum--which is somewhere to the right of center. Classifying them as of "the right" enables us to avoid disputes over political definition, such as whether someone is "conservative" or "libertarian." The list below is a distillation of responses canvassed from 50 academics, politicians, journalists, and a few unclassifiable (but wise) friends of The Daily Beast. The only strict rules were the omission of media proprietors and "suits" (so there's no Rupert Murdoch on the list, or Roger Ailes), and the elimination of politicians who have a media avatar. So no Sarah Palin.

Here, in ascending order, is The Daily Beast's list of America's 25 most consequential right-wing journalists...