“MEDIA PERSONALITIES LIKE” is a pretty important part of that sentence that you shortened to sound conspiratorial. It would do everyone well to read the entire article rather than look at the shortest quote for a gotcha.

In April, he won the prestigious White House Press Correspondents’ Award “for overall excellence in White House coverage”

That’s like the fourth paragraph. So, yes, even if you don’t know him, that’s very influential. The article also goes over plenty of examples across Meta, CNN, NYT, Google and many others.