Jon Stewart has been wrongly interpreted as a critic of Joe Rogan before the latest cancellation attempt was mounted. However late last night he made it apparent that he supports Joe Rogan.
Stewart was reacting to the decision made by Neil Yong, Joni Mitchell and several other elderly artists (whose catalogues may or may not be owned by corporate interests) to pull the music from spotify over giving JRE a platform.
Stewart addressed the situation on an episode of his podcast, The Problem With Jon Stewart:
“There’s no question that there is egregious misinformation that’s purposeful and hateful, and that being moderated is a credit to the platforms that run them,” Stewart said. “But this overreaction to Rogan, I think, is a mistake.”
“I think there are dishonest bad actors in the world and identifying those is so much more important to me,” he said, adding: “Don’t leave. Don’t abandon. Don’t censor. Engage.”
Would you take your music off of Spotify? pic.twitter.com/ltrA81DUee
— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) February 3, 2022
Meanwhile both Spotify and Rogan issued public statements respectively saying:
“We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users. In that role, it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them,”.
“I think if there’s anything that I’ve done that I could do better is have more experts with differing opinions right after I have the controversial ones,” Joe Rogan said in a video posted on Instagram.