Rankings Winfrey was called "arguably the world's most powerful woman" by
CNN and
TIME, "arguably the most influential woman in the world" by
The American Spectator, "
one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th Century" and "one of the most influential people" from 2004 to 2011 by
TIME. Winfrey is the only person to have appeared in the latter list on
ten occasions. At the end of the 20th century,
Life listed Winfrey as both the most influential woman and the most influential black person of her generation, and in a cover story profile the magazine called her "America's most powerful woman". In 2007,
USA Today ranked Winfrey as the most influential woman and most influential black person of the previous quarter-century. ''
Ladies' Home Journal also ranked Winfrey number one in their list of the most powerful women in America and then Senator Barack Obama in 2007 said she "may be the most influential woman in the country". In 1998, Winfrey became the first woman and first African American to top Entertainment Weekly list of the 101 most powerful people in the entertainment industry. Forbes'' named her the world's most powerful celebrity in 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2013. As chairman of
Harpo Inc., she was named the
most powerful woman in entertainment by
The Hollywood Reporter in 2008. She has been listed as one of the
world's 100 most powerful women by
Forbes, ranking 14th in 2014 and 31st in 2023. In 2010,
Life magazine named Winfrey one of the 100 people who changed the world, alongside
Jesus Christ,
Elvis Presley, and
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Winfrey was the only living woman to make the list. Columnist
Maureen Dowd seems to agree with such assessments. Interviewed by
The Guardian in 2006, Dowd said: "She is the top alpha female in this country. She has more credibility than the president. Other successful women, such as
Hillary Clinton and
Martha Stewart, had to be publicly slapped down before they could move forward. Even
Condi has had to play the protégé with Bush. None of this happened to Oprah – she is a straight ahead success story."
Vanity Fair wrote: "Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope.
Bill O'Reilly said: "this is a woman that came from nothing to rise up to be the most powerful woman, I think, in the world. I think Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in the world, not just in America. That's – anybody who goes on her program immediately benefits through the roof. I mean, she has a loyal following; she has credibility; she has talent; and she's done it on her own to become fabulously wealthy and fabulously powerful." In 2005, Winfrey was named the greatest woman in American history as part of a public poll as part of
The Greatest American. She was ranked No. 9 overall on the list of greatest Americans. However, polls estimating Winfrey's personal popularity have been inconsistent. A November 2003 Gallup poll estimated that 73% of American adults had a favorable view of Winfrey. Another Gallup poll in January 2007 estimated the figure at 74%, although it dropped to 66% when Gallup conducted the same poll in October 2007. A December 2007
Fox News poll put the figure at 55%. According to
Gallup's annual most admired poll, Americans consistently rank Winfrey as one of the most admired women in the world. Her highest rating came in 2007 when she was statistically tied with
Hillary Clinton for first place. In a list compiled by the British magazine
New Statesman in September 2010, she was voted 38th in the list of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010". In 1989, she was accepted into the
NAACP Image Award Hall of Fame.
"Oprahfication" The Wall Street Journal coined the term "Oprahfication", meaning public confession as a form of therapy. By confessing intimate details about her weight problems, tumultuous love life, and sexual abuse, and crying alongside her guests, Winfrey has been credited by
Time magazine with creating a new form of media communication known as "rapport talk" as distinguished from the "report talk" of Phil Donahue: "Winfrey saw television's power to blend public and private; while it links strangers and conveys information over public airwaves, TV is most often viewed in the privacy of our homes. Like a family member, it sits down to meals with us and talks to us in the lonely afternoons. Grasping this paradox, ... She makes people care because she cares. That is Winfrey's genius, and will be her legacy, as the changes she has wrought in the talk show continue to permeate our culture and shape our lives." Observers have also noted the "Oprahfication" of politics such as "Oprah-style debates" and
Bill Clinton being described as "the man who brought Oprah-style psychobabble and misty confessions to politics".
Newsweek stated: "Every time a politician lets his lip quiver or a cable anchor 'emotes' on TV, they nod to the cult of confession that Oprah helped create." The November 1988
Ms. observed that "in a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality [...] But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant – damned near gorgeous – with her drop-dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality."
Daytime talk show's impact on LGBT people While
Phil Donahue has been credited with pioneering the tabloid talk show genre, Winfrey's warmth, intimacy, and personal confession popularized and changed it. Yale sociology professor
Joshua Gamson credits the tabloid talk show genre with providing much needed high-impact media visibility for gay,
bisexual,
transsexual, and
transgender (LGBT) people and doing more to make them mainstream and socially acceptable than any other development of the 20th century. In the book's editorial review,
Michael Bronski wrote, "In the recent past, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people had almost no presence on television. With the invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows such as
Jerry Springer,
Jenny Jones,
Oprah, and
Geraldo, people outside the sexual mainstream now appear in living rooms across America almost every day of the week." Gamson credits the tabloid talk show with making alternative sexual orientations and identities more acceptable in mainstream society. Examples include a
Time magazine article on early 21st-century gays
coming out of the closet at an increasingly younger age and on plummeting
gay suicide rates. Gamson also believes that tabloid talk shows caused gays to be accepted on more traditional forms of media. In April 1997, Winfrey played the therapist in "
The Puppy Episode" on the sitcom
Ellen to whom the character (and the real-life
Ellen DeGeneres) came out as a lesbian.
"The Oprah Effect" The power of Winfrey's opinions and endorsement to influence public opinion, especially consumer purchasing choices, has been dubbed "the
Oprah Effect". The effect has been documented or alleged in domains as diverse as book sales, beef markets, and election voting. Late in 1996, Winfrey introduced the
Oprah's Book Club segment to her television show. The segment focused on new books and classics and often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book club became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book-club selection, it instantly became a best-seller; for example, when she selected the classic
John Steinbeck novel
East of Eden, it soared to the top of the book charts. Being recognized by Winfrey often means a million additional book sales for an author. In
Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America (2005), Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading – a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act – and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books." When author
Jonathan Franzen's book was selected for the Book Club, he reportedly "cringed" and said selected books tend to be "schmaltzy". After
James Frey's
A Million Little Pieces was found to contain fabrications in 2006, Winfrey confronted him on her show over the breach of trust. In 2009, Winfrey apologized to Frey for the public confrontation. During a show about
mad cow disease with
Howard Lyman (aired on April 16, 1996), Winfrey said she was stopped cold from eating another burger. Texas cattlemen sued her and Lyman in early 1998 for "false defamation of perishable food" and "business disparagement," claiming that Winfrey's remarks sent cattle prices tumbling, costing beef producers $11 million. Winfrey was represented by attorney
Chip Babcock and, on February 26, after a two-month trial in an
Amarillo, Texas, court, a jury found Winfrey and Lyman were not liable for damages. Winfrey's ability to launch other successful talk shows such as
Dr. Phil,
The Dr. Oz Show, and
Rachael Ray has also been cited as examples of "The Oprah Effect".
Politics Matthew Baum and Angela Jamison performed an experiment testing their hypothesis, "Politically unaware individuals who consume
soft news will be more likely to vote consistently than their counterparts who do not consume soft news". In their studies, they found that low-awareness individuals who watch soft news shows, such as
The Oprah Winfrey Show are 14% more likely to vote consistently than low-awareness individuals who only watch hard news.
She endorsed presidential candidate Barack Obama in the
2008 presidential election. On September 25, 2006, Winfrey made her first endorsement of Obama for
president on
Larry King Live, the first time she endorsed a political candidate running for office. Two economists estimate that Winfrey's endorsement was worth over a million votes in the
Democratic primary race and that without it, Obama would have lost the nomination. Winfrey held a fundraiser for Obama on September 8, 2007, at her
Santa Barbara estate. In December 2007, Winfrey joined Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The
Columbia, South Carolina, event on December 9, 2007, drew a crowd of nearly 30,000, the largest for any political event of 2007. An analysis by two economists at the
University of Maryland, College Park estimated that Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for between 420,000 and 1,600,000 votes for Obama in the Democratic primary alone, based on a sample of states that did not include Texas, Michigan, North Dakota, Kansas, or Alaska. The results suggest that in the sampled states, Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for the difference in the popular vote between Barack Obama and
Hillary Clinton. The governor of Illinois,
Rod Blagojevich, reported being so impressed by Winfrey's endorsement that he considered offering Winfrey Obama's vacant senate seat, describing Winfrey as "the most instrumental person in electing Barack Obama president," with "a voice larger than all 100 senators combined". Winfrey responded by stating that although she was absolutely not interested, she did feel she could be a senator. The
Topps trading card company memorialized Oprah's involvement in the campaign by featuring her on a card in a set commemorating Obama's road to the White House. In April 2014, Winfrey spoke for more than 20 minutes at a
fundraiser in
Arlington, Virginia, for Lavern Chatman, a candidate in a
primary to nominate a
Democratic Party candidate for election to the
U.S. House of Representatives. Winfrey participated in the event even after reports had revealed that Chatman had been found liable in 2001 for her role in a scheme to defraud hundreds of
District of Columbia nursing-home employees of at least $1.4 million in owed wages. Winfrey endorsed
Hillary Clinton in the
2016 election, and referred to
Republican candidate
Donald Trump as a "demagogue". In 2018, Winfrey canvassed door-to-door for
Georgia gubernatorial Democratic nominee
Stacey Abrams and donated $500,000 to the
March for Our Lives student demonstration in favor of gun control in the United States. Winfrey has at times been the subject of media speculation that she may run for president herself, most notably in the lead-up to the
2020 election in which some reports claimed that she was actively considering launching a campaign for the
Democratic nomination. Winfrey ultimately denied any plans to run for president, saying in 2018 that while it was "a humbling thing to have people think you can run the country", she "would not be able to do it. It's not a clean business. It would kill me." Winfrey suggested that she would publicly endorse a candidate in the 2020 Democratic primaries, however she ultimately did not do so. She later campaigned for
Joe Biden during the general election. In early 2018, Winfrey met with
Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of
Saudi Arabia, when he visited the United States. In the
2022 Pennsylvania Senate election, Winfrey endorsed
Democrat John Fetterman over
Republican Mehmet Oz, whose show she promoted. In the
2022 Maryland gubernatorial election, she endorsed Baltimore author
Wes Moore in the Democratic primary, co-hosting a virtual fundraiser for him in June. Winfrey later attended and spoke at Moore's gubernatorial inauguration on January 18, 2023. In 2022, Winfrey set up OWN Your Vote, a nonpartisan group dedicated to voter registration and a get-out-the-vote campaign focused on providing Black women with tools and resources to vote in the November election. Their partners include
Advancement Project,
African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME),
Color Of Change,
Delta Sigma Theta sorority,
The King Center,
The Lawyers' Committee,
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,
National Action Network,
National Bar Association,
National Council of Negro Women,
Sigma Gamma Rho,
Southern Poverty Law Center,
VoteRunLead, and
Vote.org. On August 21, 2024, Winfrey endorsed
Kamala Harris in the
2024 United States presidential election at the
2024 Democratic National Convention.
Spiritual leadership In 2000, she was awarded the
Spingarn Medal from the
NAACP. In 2002,
Christianity Today published an article called "The Church of O" in which they concluded that Winfrey had emerged as an influential spiritual leader. "Since 1994, when she abandoned traditional talk-show fare for more edifying content, and 1998, when she began 'Change Your Life TV', Oprah's most significant role has become that of a spiritual leader. To her audience of more than 22 million mostly female viewers, she has become a postmodern priestess—an icon of church-free spirituality." Since the mid-1990s, Winfrey's show has emphasized uplifting and inspirational topics and themes and some viewers say the show has motivated them to perform acts of altruism such as helping
Congolese women and building an orphanage. A scientific study by psychological scientists at the University of Cambridge,
University of Plymouth, and
University of California used an uplifting clip from The Oprah Winfrey Show in an experiment that discovered that watching the 'uplifting' clip caused subjects to become twice as helpful as subjects assigned to watch a British comedy or nature documentary. In 1998, Winfrey began an ongoing conversation with
Gary Zukav, an American spiritual teacher, who appeared on her television show 35 times. Winfrey has said she keeps a copy of Zukav's
The Seat of the Soul at her bedside, a book that she says is one of her all-time favorites. On the season premiere of Winfrey's 13th season,
Roseanne Barr told Winfrey "you're the African Mother Goddess of us all" inspiring much enthusiasm from the studio audience. The animated series
Futurama alluded to her spiritual influence by suggesting that "Oprahism" is a mainstream religion in 3000 AD. Twelve days after the
September 11 attacks, New York mayor
Rudy Giuliani asked Winfrey to serve as host of a Prayer for America service at New York City's
Yankee Stadium, which was attended by former president
Bill Clinton and New York senator
Hillary Clinton. Leading up to the U.S.-led
2001 invasion of Afghanistan, less than a month after the September 11 attacks, Winfrey aired a controversial show called "Islam 101" in which she portrayed Islam as a
religion of peace, calling it "the most misunderstood of the three major religions". In 2002,
George W. Bush invited Winfrey to join a US delegation that included adviser
Karen Hughes and
Condoleezza Rice, planning to go to Afghanistan to celebrate the return of Afghan girls to school. The "Oprah strategy" was designed to portray the
war on terror in a positive light; however, when Winfrey refused to participate, the trip was postponed. Leading up to the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Winfrey's show received criticism for allegedly having an
anti-war bias.
Ben Shapiro of
Townhall.com wrote: "Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in America. She decides what makes
The New York Times Best Seller lists. Her touchy-feely style sucks in audiences at the rate of 14 million viewers per day. But Oprah is far more than a cultural force, she's a dangerous political force as well, a woman with unpredictable and mercurial attitudes toward the major issues of the day." In 2006, Winfrey recalled such controversies: "I once did a show titled
Is War the Only Answer? In the history of my career, I've never received more hate mail – like 'Go back to Africa' hate mail. I was accused of being un-American for even raising the question." Filmmaker
Michael Moore came to Winfrey's defense, praising her for showing antiwar footage no other media would show and begging her to run for president. A February 2003 series, in which Winfrey showed clips from people all over the world asking America not to go to war, was interrupted in several East Coast markets by network broadcasts of a press conference in which President
George W. Bush and
Colin Powell summarized the case for war. In 2007, Winfrey began to endorse the self-help program
The Secret.
The Secret claims that people can change their lives through positive thoughts or 'vibrations', which will then cause them to attract more positive vibrations that result in good things happening to them. Peter Birkenhead of
Salon magazine argued that this idea is
pseudoscience and psychologically damaging, as it trivializes important decisions and promotes a quick-fix material culture, and suggests Winfrey's promotion of it is irresponsible given her influence. In 2007, skeptic and magician
James Randi accused Winfrey of being deliberately deceptive and uncritical in how she handles paranormal claims on her show. In 2008, Winfrey endorsed author and spiritual teacher
Eckhart Tolle and his book, ''
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose'', which sold several million extra copies after being selected for her book club. During a Webinar class, in which she promoted the book, Winfrey stated "God is a feeling experience and not a believing experience. If your religion is a believing experience [...] then that's not truly God."
Frank Pastore, a Christian radio talk show host on KKLA, was among the many Christian leaders who criticized Winfrey's views, saying "if she's a Christian, she's an ignorant one because Christianity is incompatible with
New Age thought". In 2009, Winfrey filmed a series of interviews in Denmark highlighting its citizens as the happiest people in the world. In 2010,
Bill O'Reilly of Fox News criticized these shows for promoting a left-wing society. Following the launch of the
Super Soul Sunday and
SuperSoul Sessions programs on
Harpo Productions' SuperSoul TV, in 2016 Winfrey selected 100 people for the
SuperSoul 100 list of "innovators and visionaries who are aligned on a mission to move humanity forward". On using the
N-word, Winfrey said, "You cannot be my friend and use that word around me. ... I always think of the...people who heard that as their last word as they were
hanging from a tree."
Fan base The viewership for
The Oprah Winfrey Show was highest during the 1991–92 season, when about 13.1 million U.S. viewers were watching each day. By 2003, ratings declined to 7.4 million daily viewers. Ratings briefly rebounded to approximately 9 million in 2005 and then declined again to around 7.3 million viewers in 2008, though it remained the highest-rated talk show. In 2008, Winfrey's show was airing in 140 countries internationally and seen by an estimated 46 million people in the US weekly. According to the
Harris poll, Winfrey was America's favorite television personality in 1998, 2000, 2002–06, and 2009. Winfrey was especially popular among women,
Democrats, political moderates,
Baby Boomers,
Generation X, Southern Americans, and East Coast Americans. Outside the U.S., Winfrey has become increasingly popular in the
Arab world.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2007 that
MBC 4, an Arab satellite channel, centered its entire programming around reruns of her show because it was drawing record numbers of female viewers in
Saudi Arabia. In 2008,
The New York Times reported that
The Oprah Winfrey Show, with Arabic subtitles, was broadcast twice each weekday on MBC 4. Winfrey's modest dress, combined with her attitude of triumph over adversity and abuse has caused some women in Saudi Arabia to idealize her.
Philanthropy temporarily sheltered at the Reliant center in Houston following
Hurricane Katrina. In 2004, Winfrey became the first Black person to rank among the 50 most generous Americans and she remained among the top 50 until 2010. By 2012, she had given away about $400 million to educational causes. As of 2012, Winfrey had also given over 400 scholarships to
Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2013, Winfrey donated $12 million to the
Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. President
Barack Obama awarded her the
Presidential Medal of Freedom later that same year. Winfrey purchased 2,130 acres of land in
Maui and set up a bed and breakfast for entertaining friends as well as a (unprofitable) organic farm; she is dedicated to keeping the area unoccupied and growing native species to aid in the restoration of damaged watersheds. She distributed pillows, diapers and other supplies to survivors of a devastating fire and, with
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, set up the People’s Fund of Maui, personally donating $25 million of her own towards the cause.
Oprah's Angel Network In 1998, Winfrey created Oprah's Angel Network, a charity that supported charitable projects and provided grants to nonprofit organizations around the world. Oprah's Angel Network raised more than $80 million ($1 million of which was donated by
Jon Bon Jovi). Winfrey personally covered all administrative costs associated with the charity, so 100% of all funds raised went to charity programs. In May 2010, with Oprah's show ending, the charity stopped accepting donations and was shut down.
South Africa In 2004, Winfrey and her team filmed an episode of her show, "Oprah's Christmas Kindness", in which Winfrey travelled to South Africa to bring attention to the plight of young children affected by poverty and AIDS. During the 21-day trip, Winfrey and her crew visited schools and orphanages in poverty-stricken areas, and distributed Christmas presents to 50,000 children, with dolls for the girls and soccer balls for the boys, and school supplies. Throughout the show, Winfrey appealed to viewers to donate money to Oprah's Angel Network for poor and AIDS-affected children in Africa. From that show alone, viewers around the world donated over $7 million. Winfrey invested $40 million and some of her time establishing the
Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in
Henley on Klip south of
Johannesburg, South Africa. The school, set over 22 acres, opened in January 2007 with an enrollment of 150 pupils (increasing to 450) and features state-of-the-art classrooms, computer and science laboratories, a library, a theatre, and a beauty salon.
Nelson Mandela praised Winfrey for overcoming her own disadvantaged youth to become a benefactor for others. Critics considered the school elitist and unnecessarily luxurious. Winfrey rejected the claims, saying: "If you are surrounded by beautiful things and wonderful teachers who inspire you, that beauty brings out the beauty in you." Winfrey teaches a class at the school via satellite. ==Filmography==