Joe Rogan and the Media’s Seething Envy
Is anybody falling for the media’s excuses for launching a full-scale attack to force Joe Rogan off Spotify? Because I’m not. After the last five years, the media is about as subtle as a punch in the throat.
Sure, they’re screeching like scalded cats that Joe Rogan is “dangerous” because he allows “misinformation” on his podcast. But they’re lying. This has nothing to do with “misinformation” and everything to do with professional jealousy.
It eats away at the likes of CNN or the Washington Post that the audience Joe Rogan draws in a single podcast is ten times the size of CNN’s audience for an entire month. Rogan’s audience is probably larger than the Washington Post’s entire subscription list.
That’s why they’re acting like this.
It just grates their cheese that Rogan is doing what they can’t – namely, providing engaging, interesting content that draws an audience.
And I guarantee you, not one of those angry, sputtering assholes demanding Spotify cancel Rogan’s contract has ever tuned in to a single episode of his podcast. At most, they’ve watched a 2-minute video clip after it goes viral on Twitter.
In a Twitter thread this morning, Iowa Law School professor Andy Grewal explained that he decided to listen to a Joe Rogan podcast to see what all the fuss was about. While you should read the entire thread, this particular comment stood out for me:
I’ve only listened for ~1 hour. And I hate reductionist explanations. But I think the media hates Rogan because he actually knows how to interview. He asks great questions. His “sin” is letting people respond.
And that’s it in a nutshell.
Joe Rogan is doing what the media used to do – bring people on and interview them regardless of what they believe.
Sure, some of Rogan’s guests might make some outlandish comments. But that happens when you interview people from all walks of life. And as Grewal said, Rogan asks great questions. He doesn’t just let remarks go unchallenged.
Journalists used to do this, you know.
Back in 2017, when Megyn Kelly interviewed Alex Jones on NBC, the media went insane over it. How dare she give this man a platform to spew his crazy conspiracy theories?!!!
I argued at the time, “An interview is not an endorsement.” As an example, I pointed to the 1966 Playboy interview writer Alex Haley (the guy who wrote “Roots”) did with George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party.
Journalists used to take risks – even facing off with someone who is as ideologically different from them as Rockwell was to Haley.
The purpose was to expose people to a mindset or a different viewpoint than the one they ordinarily see or hear.
You get to the end of Haley’s interview with Rockwell, and if you’re like me, you need to shower.
Not every interview we see on TV or read in a magazine will reaffirm our worldview.
Some things may even make us uncomfortable.
That’s the beauty of a free exchange of ideas.
It allows you to formulate your own conclusions.
Joe Rogan does that which is part of the reason why he has such a massive audience.
The modern American news media is incapable of that which is part of the reason they’re losing audiences.
But this is something the American media will never figure out.
Yesterday, a writer from the New York Times tweeted this:
This is back-asswards.
It isn’t that people “trust” Joe Rogan.
It’s that Rogan trusts his viewers enough not to treat them like brain-dead children who have to be spoon-fed what to hear or what to believe.
Trust is a two-way street.
If Matthew Rosenberg wants the media to be trusted, perhaps the media should stop shielding their audiences from “WrongThink” and start trusting them to make up their own minds.
By declaring that nobody should be exposed to “misinformation,” the media is acknowledging that they believe people are dimwitted idiots incapable of disseminating information and using their brains to draw their own conclusions.
But the people working in the “news media” are no longer journalists, but propagandists, which is why they don’t recognize what Joe Rogan does.
And they lack the self-reflection and intelligence to understand that the problem isn’t Joe Rogan and it isn’t “misinformation.”
The problem is the American corporate news media has lost its way.
On a related note, yesterday, Joe Rogan released a video responding to the coordinated attempt to remove him from Spotify.
Here’s a segment:
Watch Rogan’s full response HERE.
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