Why Ben Shapiro’s Media Empire Is Collapsing

By

Ross Barkan,

a political columnist for Intelligencer

There was a time, not very long ago, when Ben Shapiro could reasonably call himself the king of all conservative media.

In 2020, as Drew Harwell at the Washington Post notes, Shapiro’s media company, the Daily Wire, “ranked as Facebook’s top English-language publisher for three straight months. Its sarcastic news items on then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s salon visits gained millions more views than the websites of Fox News, CNN and the New York Times.” Shapiro himself was ubiquitous, a right-wing star who had risen to fame before Donald Trump and seamlessly adapted to the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party. He was a digital battering ram against the Democrats and the progressive left. He seemed guaranteed, like Fox itself, for an indefinite run at the top of the media heap.