OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Podcast star Joe Rogan is hitting back at CNN, saying the network wanted to get him canceled and failed.
But after new episodes of his show were paused for a week, Spotify, the company that has a contract with Rogan, removed 70 episodes of his show, The Daily Mail reported.
Many of the podcasts that were yanked involved far-right commentators – or outright conspiracy theorists – and included Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Owen Benjamin and Canadian writer Gavin Miles McInnes.
Rogan’s show, The Joe Rogan Experience, is the most listened-to podcast on Spotify and is central to the company’s plan to expand beyond music and take on rivals such as Apple and Amazon for a share of the podcasting market.
He was back at it in full force on Friday and mentioned the controversy he has sparked before interviewing Andy Stumpf, a retired Navy SEAL and record-setting wingsuit pilot.
“I put out a video a couple days ago; other than that, not much I can do,” he said regarding an Instagram video he shared this week where he said he was “not trying to promote misinformation.”
But then he tore into CNN who, he believes, attacked him because he has more listeners than it has viewers.
“When you’re hearing it from people who are losing the information attention game — people like CNN — when they’re calling for other networks or shows to be censored or limited, it’s like, ‘Just do better,’” the host said.
Rogan’s return Friday coincided with around six dozen of his podcast mysteriously vanishing from the site.
Some of the episodes that have been removed are from years ago, four of the podcasts from 2010.
Others taken down from the library of more than 1,700 shows include ones broadcast in 2018 and had nothing to do with Rogan’s views on the coronavirus pandemic.
Among the episodes removed are ones containing guests that have proved to be the most controversial, particularly conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of InfoWars.
After CNN fired its former host Chris Cuomo in December, Rogan shredded the network for being a left wing “propaganda” arm.
Rogan asserted that CNN is “realizing that their ratings are dogsh*t.”
“Well, I think CNN is realizing that their ratings are dogs**t and that having these highly polarizing editorial personalities like Stelter and Don Lemon and, you know, Michael Malice is f***ing hilarious. You know what he did? He put up, he goes, now the Chris Cuomo has gone, who’s the alpha male over at CNN? He put up a poll, and everybody said Anderson Cooper. I think Anderson Cooper came in first,” the host said.
“I personally, maybe this is just my bias, I want the news. I want objective news,” he said.
“I want someone to tell me what are the facts of what’s going on? And what’s happening? I don’t want your ideological slant. I don’t want this left-wing propaganda network, which is what CNN has become. The way I look at CNN now is so different than the way I looked at CNN 15-20 years ago. I used to look at them as like, this is how I get the news. This is unbiased, professional news. They’re going to tell me what’s happening in Pakistan and what’s happening in, you know, Mogadishu. These are the real journalists that are telling you the news,” Rogan said.
Rogan continued, “Now, I look at them, I’m like, you f***in propagandists, like, what are you, the right arm of Pfizer? Like what are you doing? You know? It’s just a, I think there’s a market for real news. And it’s really hard to find that now. It’s really hard, especially outside of independent sources.”
