Joe Rogan Breaks His Silence On The Controversy About His Podcast

The UFC commentator and host of The Joe Rogan Experience has come under fire in recent weeks about some of the topics he discusses on his programme.

He's been accused of providing an incredibly large platform to people who espouse 'Covid-19 or vaccine misinformation'.

Rogan has posted a 10-minute video onto his social media accounts defending his show and his guests.

He said a lot of the criticism has been focused on two episodes, one with Dr Peter McCullough and another with Dr Robert Malone.

However, he argued that the two guests are well qualified to speak about their chosen fields and added that the only reason why there's been so much controversy is because their views are contrary to popular opinion in regards to the pandemic.

Rogan said Dr McCullough and Dr Malone are both 'highly intelligent', 'very accomplished' and 'highly credentialed'.

"I wanted to hear what their opinion was," he said in defence of having them on his show.

"Those episodes were labelled as 'dangerous', they had 'dangerous disinformation' in them.

"The problem I have with the term 'misinformation', especially today, is that many of the things that we thought was misinformation, even a short while ago, are now accepted as fact."

He gave an example of how wearing cloth masks are now considered to be less effective at stopping the spread of Covid-19, however if you said that eight months ago then he reckons you'd be 'kicked off' social media.

Rogan explained how he doesn't know 100 per cent that what his guests say are true, however he feels it's necessary for there to be a platform where they can speak without the usual repercussions if they did the same thing on social media.

He also notes how he gets people with a range of perspectives on, whether he agrees with them or not, because he thinks it's important to have a variety of ideas disseminated to the public.

Legendary singer Neil Young asked for his music to be taken off Spotify because he didn't want to share a platform with Rogan.

He's since been followed by Joni Mitchell and other musicians or podcasters who have asked for their content to be removed, and the streaming service even copped criticism from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

There was also a letter signed by 270 scientists, doctors and experts who condemned Rogan's interview with virologist Dr Robert Malone.

During the interview, Malone claimed - amongst other things - the idea that people believe that Covid-19 vaccines are effective because of 'mass formation psychosis', as well as claiming that hospitals have been financially cajoled into diagnosing deaths as having been due to Covid-19.

The letter reads: "With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world's largest podcast and has tremendous influence.

"Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy."

Spotify has now responded by introducing a content advisory for any podcast that talks about the coronavirus or vaccines.

The streaming service says the content advisory will 'direct listeners to our dedicated Covid-19 Hub', which is the company's resource 'that provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics and public health authorities around the world, as well as links to trusted sources'.

It hopes this will 'combat misinformation' and it will be rolled out across the globe over the next few days.