Power 50 2017

Donald Trump has been really good to Rachel Maddow. In February, her show hit a ratings high in its nine-year history, with an average of 2.3 million viewers an episode--a phenomenon that Maddow partly attributes to a "surge in civic interest and engagement." It may also be that MSNBC understands that millennials, in particular, don't consider balance to be virtuous, especially in the era of Trump. Maddow's pointed, dumbfounded critiques of the White House align with the way we speak on social media. Accuracy is important--pretending to be impartial less so. Having come of age as an AIDS activist in San Francisco, Maddow understands that on some issues, at least, there is only one side worth taking. On Trump's ties to Russia, in particular, The Rachel Maddow Show has been indispensable, helping navigate readers through complex connections. But in other areas she sometimes risks putting ratings above credibility: A supposed scoop in March on Trump's tax returns turned out to be a damp squib, very likely planted by the president himself. But Maddow's instincts have steered her show to prime-time glory at precisely the moment when her kind of detail-obsessed precision reporting is more vital than ever. "When something important is happening, I want people to feel like they should come to me," she told Rolling Stone in June. Mission accomplished.