The Media is Lying About Joe Rogan Right Now
The desire to claim Rogan's scalp is turning mainstream media into a fake news factory.
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Podcaster Joe Rogan stirred controversy this week when he commented on his show about whether young people should elect to be vaccinated against COVID, stating that he didn’t believe it was necessary for a healthy 21-year-old to receive the vaccine.
Those comments sparked a predicable firestorm and backlash from mainstream news outlets — predictable due in part to the highly sensitive environment surrounding public health information and the taboo on views that deviate from (ever-shifting) public health announcements and guidelines. But the response was also predicable due to Joe Rogan’s lightning rod status in today’s media and political environment. Rogan’s podcast is one of the largest and most influential media platforms in the country, rivaling the reach and audience size of cable news networks, and the platform’s independence allows it to transgress the more constrained and orthodox boundaries of debate and ideas found in traditional media environments (resulting in a palpable resentment of Rogan among many legacy media journalists and news executives).
Now, those news outlets have updated the story to report that Rogan has reversed his position and admitted to having a misinformed view. There’s just one problem with these reports: He didn’t do anything of the sort.
Bordering on outright fabrication, the media’s headlines are grossly distorting Rogan’s latest comments, ostensibly to claim a victory over a media figure regarded with a mix of jealousy and contempt throughout elite media circles. Below one can actually watch Rogan’s comments for themselves — something the media’s reporting about Rogan often relies on its audience not doing. And in it, it’s clear to see that Rogan is reiterating a common refrain from his show: That neither it nor he are a source of authoritative scientific or medical information, and that the show is an open platform for debate and a free exchange of ideas. What Rogan clearly does not do is what media outlets are currently reporting, which is an admission that he was wrong to make the comments he did from earlier in the week:
(What’s more, in the clip Rogan conveys his own intention to get the vaccine, and that he was prevented from doing so earlier because of the CDC’s pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.)
The obsession with Rogan within elite media is leading it down a perilous road in which it’s now resorting to inventing its own wildly distorted interpretations of discussions on Rogan’s show — an effort that is clearly targeted at tarnishing Rogan’s legitimacy and reputation and imposing the same type of controls on his platform that they enjoy imposing over vast swaths of discussion and debate throughout the country’s more mainstream institutions.
It is reasonable to decline pharmaceutical products under Emergency Use Authorization using new mRNA technology never heretofore approved by the FDA. It is reasonable to question data from corporations that have paid record setting billion dollar fines for malfeasance, from corporations who have billions to gain in profits. It is reasonable to conclude the risks of vaccination outweighs the benefit, especially for young adults and children. This does not make one an “anti vaxxer,” or “anti science,” but a thoughtful and judicious person.
I'm a liberal, but now, like many of us have no political home. When I heard things every once in a while about Rogan in the media or from friends denouncing him, he sounded like a total jerk. But I had free time this past year and being as I'm not really into looting and rioting, and everything else was shut down I became a big fan of his podcast. He's absolutely a liberal, he's no far left radical but he's certainly not anything even remotely alt right. The thing that got him in trouble was sticking up for women MMA fighters who were being put into fights with a trans woman who had not disclosed that she lived as a man for 30 some years. I believe she cracked two biological women's skulls. This should have been the easiest thing EVER to condemn. It's one thing if a woman knows about her competitors past, but just like the track meets or cycling contests we've all seen clips of, everyone knows that watching a trans woman win prizes and prestige and smoking the biological females when they were not good when competing with males is ridiculous. That's why they get booed often, everyone knows that's cheating. Fighting a woman when you have gone through male puberty is worse. Every society condemns men hitting women. It's so obvious to all of humanity! But as you said these young media types all went to fancy schools, work for big companies and have an inflated ego (Hell if my byline was on page 1 of the NYT I'd have one too.) But America is turning away from them in droves, because of constant lies like Russiagate, mistakes they never bother telling their audience they screwed up, and the newest idiocy of telling all of us lumpen proles, that we are full of various backwards bigotries, that the country we are mostly proud of is nothing but a white supremacist project, that we are all stained at birth if we are white.... I mean why would anybody NOT hate these outlets by now? Joe Rogan is willing to have interesting conversations with interesting people without the agenda. I hope these big outlets start listening and learning from his show, because we really need a free press. Sorry for the long response .😋