Former US talk show host Jon Stewart defended Joe Rogan amid the ongoing row over alleged Covid-19 ‘conspiracy theories’ by questioning “who gets to decide” what is, and is not, misinformation. Stewart likened the situation to his opposition to the 2003 Iraq War, which he said could have prompted similar calls to “censor” him.
During an episode of his ‘The Problem with Jon Stewart’ podcast on Thursday, the comedian noted that newspapers promoting the Bush administration’s claims of there being weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, in the run-up to the invasion, were not held accountable for spreading “misinformation.”
“The New York Times was a giant purveyor of misinformation, and disinformation… And that’s as vaunted a media organization as you can find, but there was no accountability for them,” Stewart said, adding that the paper reported about Saddam Hussein, WMDs and “tubes that can only be used for nuclear war,” among other things.
Stewart, who was a prominent and vocal opponent of the war, added that he “was promoting what they would call misinformation” by criticizing the coverage. “But it turned out to be right years later and the establishment media was wrong.”
Rogan has come under fire in recent weeks after being accused of promoting Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation on his popular Spotify podcast, ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’. After the platform resisted calls to drop Rogan, a handful of musicians, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, have pulled their music from the app in protest.
Last week, Stewart criticized their actions as a “mistake” and “overreaction.”
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