MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle and a liberal guest criticized Spotify's invocation of cancel culture in a letter on why it would not drop podcast star Joe Rogan, claiming Monday that no one was attempting to "silence" him.
Rogan, whose popular podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience" has been exclusively on Spotify since 2020, has found himself in the crosshairs of liberal activists and media in recent weeks, over criticism of his guests and past rhetoric, controversial COVID-19 and vaccine content, and recently, a montage of times he used the "n-word" on the show, which Rogan apologized for but said was also taken out of context.
Rogan and Spotify have removed some of his past episodes in response to critics, and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote a widely panned letter where he acknowledged criticism of Rogan and apologized to employees for the distraction of his controversies, but said "silencing" or "canceling" Rogan would be a mistake.
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"I found the letter problematic," New York Times opinion writer and podcast host Kara Swisher said on MSNBC. "The word 'silencing' and cancel culture were all throughout it as if there to create a false narrative here. It’s a simple matter of, they didn’t really listen to what he was doing, and they have some responsibility for it. They don’t think they have very much, and now they’re caught in a mess. It’s sort of just a sloppy mess as far as I can tell. It sounds like they weren’t listening to Joe Rogan, is my take."
"To that very point, now using this, ‘silencing Joe Rogan’ … Isn’t that meant to deepen this cultural divide and trigger people?" Ruhle asked. "Nobody is getting silenced, right? They can have a code of conduct that says, 'Here are some rules you need to adhere to and furthermore, let's just do some fact-checking, let’s correct falsehoods.' I have to make corrections all the time. This isn’t about silencing anyone."
However, calls to censor or de-platform Rogan have been growing for weeks. Musician Neil Young removed his music from Spotify after giving the streaming service an ultimatum to take action on his COVID-19 "misinformation," with others like Joni Mitchell following suit.
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Left-wing Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan blamed Rogan for the death of a former colleague from COVID-19, although she said she didn't know if her late friend listened to the podcast, and liberal CNN anchor Jim Acosta suggested this weekend Rogan should be fired after playing the montage of Rogan's past use of the "n-word." on the show.
Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host on Spotify, has emerged as Public Enemy No.1 among many liberals who have called for him to be censored. (Photo by Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images)
CNN in particular has feuded with Rogan, falsely accusing him of taking "horse dewormer" when he took ivermectin for COVID-19 when he contracted the disease last year. On CNN's "Reliable Sources" on Sunday, Insider correspondent Claire Atkinson called for Spotify to drop Rogan.
Swisher said Spotify was trying to put itself in the "heroic" position of defending free speech and had abdicated its responsibility by not vetting his show more closely. She even argued that Rogan had essentially "silenced" himself by removing some of his own episodes.
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"It’s completely a mess," she said. "Essentially, Spotify is a media company, and they’re not very good at it, is what it is. And they like to pretend they’re not a media company, that they're a benign platform that just happened to pay Joe Rogan $100 million … And then it gets sucked into this culture war kind of thing, which is just where they want it."
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