Last week, many musicians, following Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, threatened to pull their music from Spotify if the massive streaming service did not take action to remove or censor Joe Rogan’s Spotify-exclusive podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” following the show’s continued dissemination of vaccine misinformation.
“The Joe Rogan Experience” is considered to be the most listened to podcast worldwide, garnering hundreds of millions of listeners each month. Spotify purchased exclusive streaming rights to the podcast in 2020 for a reported $100 million and assured both Rogan and his listeners that they would not dictate the content or guests of the show.
Since the start of the pandemic, Rogan has brought on countless numbers of guests to speak on various issues related to COVID-19. He is primarily facing backlash for hosting Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Robert Malone – two men who have repeatedly cherry-picked and misrepresented data regarding the vaccines in order to promote hesitancy towards the shot.
Rogan himself has not been vaccinated but tested positive for COVID in September. While he was sick, the podcaster sparked further controversy over his use of the drug Ivermectin which has not been proven to be effective in treating COVID-19.
Joe Rogan is certainly a controversial figure when it comes to the vaccine. It’s clear that his podcast spreads false information about COVID to massive audiences, however censorship by removing his content from Spotify is wrong.
If you don’t listen to the show, you would think all Rogan talks about is politics and COVID. However, out of Rogan’s 58 episodes since October, only three of his guests focused their conversations on vaccines, one of them being CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Joe Rogan is self-admittedly progressive. He supports free healthcare, free education, drug legalization and increased abortion access. Rogan has introduced his audience to countless leftists, supported Bernie Sanders in 2020 and has admittedly, “never voted right wing in [his] life.” Do those on the left really want to silence someone who promotes liberal ideas to millions who would have otherwise not been interested?
The media’s main goal in targeting Rogan is power. “The Joe Rogan Experience” reaches more people in a single episode than CNN, MSNBC, and FOX reach in a day combined. Joe Rogan and other podcasters threaten the monopoly of these archaic and intellectually vapid “news” channels. Highlighting drama about Joe Rogan is yet another push by the media to further the political divide between citizens and increase their audience.
These major networks regularly spread false information whilst violating journalistic and ethical values. The government and mainstream medias’ continued dissemination of misinformation is what caused people not to trust vaccines at the beginning– not Joe Rogan.
Whether or not Rogan had his podcast, hundreds of millions of Americans would remain unvaccinated. Having guests who have misrepresented COVID-19 data has given Rogan the opportunity to correct those errors and, in the future, have guests who present accurate information, something he has promised to continue doing going forward.
Removing incorrect information eliminates the chance for it to be corrected, allowing lies to fester in private below the surface of public awareness. Rogan has made mistakes in the past that he’s owned up for, providing his listeners with a lesson on his errors and why they were hurtful.
The entire basis of our political and scientific culture revolves around the principle of having open conversations and debates on important topics. In a culture where it’s shunned to have an opposing viewpoint to the mainstream narrative, there ceases to be a free and progressive society. Science is a never-ending process, and it’s the challenges and criticisms to prevailing thought that keeps it evolving. We need to stop focusing on false and dangerous “solutions” to misinformation and focus on spreading accurate and compelling facts.
Rogan, with hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of millions of fans, will be fine if Spotify de-platforms his content – it’ll be the next creator that speaks against the prevailing narrative that will be punished.
