Sunny Hostin wants Spotify to step in when it comes to Joe Rogan’s podcast, particularly when it comes to disseminating potentially harmful coronavirus rhetoric.
Hostin wants Spotify to take responsibility for Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, creating an interesting dynamic on The View panel.
“It’s not Spotify’s job. We have the First Amendment in this country, we have to stick with it,” said Joy Behar. “You can’t just pick and choose when you want to use the First Amendment.”
While Hostin disagreed, Behar continued, "I agree that Joe Rogan is a horror. A horror! But the way to counter that speech is more speech. The way to counter is with boycotts."
“Do you want good corporate citizens, Joy?” said Hostin. “People always came down on Facebook and they came down on Twitter, they said they’re disseminating all this dangerous information. Don’t they have some accountability for it? It is their platform, it is their business. I want a good corporate citizen. I want a citizen that has a policy.”
“I’m not saying Joe Rogan should be removed from Spotify,” she continued. “He’s got 11 million listeners. He’s got a $100 million contract as of 2020. But I do think, as the podcast platform, you have to have some sort of guidelines. How about a disclaimer on a podcast that says: ‘This is misinformation.’ How about removing some of the podcast that disseminates this information?”
While Behar continued to say that the best way to counter Rogan's misinformation is with an informational campaign, Hostin still continued with her argument.
“We are held to the ABC News standard because ABC News is our platform,” she said. “It just doesn’t make sense. If you think about some of the things Joe Rogan said, he called a trans-woman, a mixed martial artist, a man. In terms of Islamophobia, he had the Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes. He used his appearance to argue that Muslims are too inbred for the U.S. to accept as immigrants.”
“In terms of racism, in 2013, he said that he was walking into a Black neighborhood and felt like he was walking into Africa and watching Planet of the Apes,” she continued. “…I understand he has a right to say that. But this platform needs to police his content.”
