Investigative journalist Scott Carney recently exposed the inner workings of how podcast influencers shield each other from accountability. In a recent YouTube video, he used his cancelled appearance on the Danny Jones Podcast as a prime example.
Carney had been courted for months by Jones’s producer, Steve Sanchez, who sent numerous emails and text messages requesting an in-person interview. Though Carney typically avoids travelling for interviews that could be done via webcam, he eventually agreed when he had reason to visit Florida.
The interview was scheduled for a particular weekend, but just 30 minutes before Carney shared his story publicly, he received a cancellation email.
According to Carney, the producer cited his “accusations against Huberman as the reason” for the last-minute cancellation.
Carney had previously reported on Andrew Huberman’s “changing opinions on science relating to the sponsorship money that he gets” as well as “the various s**ual abuse claims by multiple women that have been documented by multiple magazines.”
The irony was not lost on Carney. The subject line of Sanchez’s cancellation email read “No subject off limits.” But apparently, one subject was indeed off limits: “accurately reporting Huberman’s changing opinions on science relating to the sponsorship money that he gets.”
Carney believes Jones canceled the interview because “Jones is trying to court Andrew Huberman going on his podcast.” He searched online and found only one tweet from Huberman stating he had never been on Jones’s podcast, leading Carney to conclude that Huberman is “either in the lineup to come up or he wants nothing to do with this guy.”
The journalist identified a pattern at work. “I do care that there’s an influencer network of people who want to gain clout,” Carney explained.
This network operates through podcasters accepting whatever is said by another influencer, creating an ecosystem where hosts avoid challenging guests on questionable claims.
Carney said: “”Like these people who want to be on… there’s this sort of discussion between people of playing this game of just accepting whatever is said by another influencer.”
Carney described how this results in two separate ecosystems: “There’s people who are basically gullible and will believe anything and there’s other people who say maybe we should tell those gullible people that the world actually, you know, science exists and reality matters and that people who are getting tons of money selling lies should be called out. Those two ecosystems don’t actually combine.”
His conclusion was direct: “What I’m seeing here is that Danny Jones, who says that nothing is off limits, well, the only thing that’s off limits for Danny Jones is truth.”
