Nearly every media outlet gets it wrong about Joe Rogan
February 1, 2022
Near everyone is shouting at Joe Rogan at present for things that Joe Rogan didn’t even say. The complaints are about what a guest on his podcast said, nothing to do with anything that Rogan did. But still such words about covid and ivermectin, as an example, must be silenced because they work against the prevailing narrative.
This is what Salon is saying, for example: “Rogan has consistently used his platform to spread erroneous claims about vaccines and viable treatments for the coronavirus. Following his positive diagnosis for COVID in September of last year, Rogan advocated for ivermectin — an obscure drug used to treat parasites — and supposedly used the drug to help with his recovery. “
You can just feel the contempt there – “obscure drug”. Well, yes, every drug is obscure until we find out it can treat something.
We’ve also got HuffPost berating Rogan: “Joe Rogan Shares Incorrect Coronavirus Story Just 24 Hours After Apology” Except this complaint is really, really weak. Because the “incorrect information “ is that Rogan tweeted out a link to this Reuters story. Which originally said, as Rogan quoted, “ivermectin is effective against Omicron in a phase III trial”. Reuters then corrected that to “shows antiviral effect” rather than “is effective” and HuffPost’s complaint is that Rogan didn’t change the tweet he’d already sent.
There is something about covid treatments that is driving the liberal press into paroxysms of rage and it’s difficult to know quite why. Anyone who even surmises that there might be a treatment other than masks and vaccines is shouted down. Except, of course, some of those surmises turn out to be pretty good guesses. Monoclonal antibodies did, ivermectin is looking like it might (that covid rates are significantly lower where ivermectin is used as a prophylactic against malaria is why it was investigated in the first place). So why are we all told, at such volume, that we’ve got to shut up?
It’s not just HuffPost and Salon either – near the entirety of the press is telling people that they may not say things. Twitter, Facebook, are editing out anything that says something on the unapproved list.
The conclusion has to be that this “correction of misinformation” is an attempt to censor that public sphere of free speech. For if they can enforce silence on something like the treatment of a pandemic then what else can they ensure that folk don’t say? That Republicans aren’t fascists, that climate change isn’t about to burn down the world, that America has its problems, sure, but gross racism and sexism aren’t one or two of them? Even, that perhaps socialism isn’t the solution to those problems America does have?
The entire media seems to have forgotten that the cure for free speech is free speech.