Media and Brand Safety in the New Political Climate: Insights from Ben Shapiro, Dan Granger and Veritone One

Jan. 24, 2025

In the latest episode of The Media Roundtable podcast, Oxford Road and Veritone One CEO and host Dan Granger is joined by The Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro to discuss the future of public discourse, free speech in the new Trump era and whether a focus on civility might offer a new way forward for brand safety in an uncertain advertising landscape.

Podcasting and the media industry at large has been left in limbo with the dissolution of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Since its founding, this framework for brand safety had faced accusations of political bias and criticism for producing keyword and category-dependent automated tools that frequently mislabeled content as unsafe. Hoping to explore a new way forward, Granger and Shapiro discuss the wide-ranging impact that ad hominem attacks in media have had on society and brands – creating a hostile environment for legitimate debate and for risk-adverse advertisers. They also question how the industry might promote greater civility, either through tools like Oxford Road’s Civility Score – a brand safety tool for measuring the volume and intensity of personal attacks on shows – or other means.

Ben Shapiro is founding editor-in-chief and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire and host of The Ben Shapiro Show. The show has been ranked in the top ten podcasts globally since 2018, and is the top conservative podcast in the United States.

Oxford Road is the world's largest podcast agency and a market leader in creator-based video advertising. Its weekly podcast, The Media Roundtable, features a wide range of industry leaders discussing the state of media and how it affects our country, so that consumers, creators and sponsors can raise the bar instead of letting it destroy us. The podcast has featured guests from Ben Smith to Lindsay Graham to T-Pain to Bill O'Reilly.

This latest podcast episode follows Insignia Capital’s acquisition of Oxford Road and Veritone One, uniting them to address a critical gap in the market, offering brands unparalleled access to and performance in podcasting, streaming audio, radio, and creator-based video channels. The industry-redefining deal puts the company at the forefront of audio innovation, including brand safety.

Listen to the latest episode of Oxford Road’s The Media Roundtable by visiting:

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