Joe Rogan Responds to Backlash After Sharing COVID Misinformation on His Spotify Podcast

Joe Rogan is addressing the controversy surrounding his Spotify podcast.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe, 54, has been taking to his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, to share misinformation about the virus and vaccine, telling young people that they don’t need to get vaccinated.

Just recently, Neil Young pulled all of his music off of Spotify after he gave the streaming service an ultimatum to either chose keeping his music on their service or Joe‘s podcast. Several other musicians followed in Neil‘s footsteps and also pulled their music from Spotify.

While Spotify decided to keep Joe‘s podcast up, they updated platform rules, including adding a content advisory to podcast episodes that contain discussions about coronavirus.

On Sunday (January 30), Joe posted a nearly 10-minute video on his Instagram addressing criticism surrounding his content.

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“Now, because of this controversy … Neil Young has removed his music from the platform of Spotify and Joni Mitchell and apparently some other people want to as well,” Joe said. “I’m very sorry that they feel that way. I most certainly don’t want that. I’m a Neil Young fan, I’ve always been a Neil Young fan.”

Joe went on to say that he agrees with Spotify’s decision to include a disclaimer on podcast episodes, before promising to make more of an effort to “balance out” the controversial opinions on his show.

“My pledge to you is that I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives, so that we can maybe find a better point of view,” Joe said. “I don’t want to just show the contrary opinion to what the narrative is. I want to show all kinds of opinions so that we can all figure what’s going on…”

Joe continued, “I do all the scheduling myself, and I don’t always get it right. These podcasts are very strange because they’re just conversations, and oftentimes I have no idea what I’m going to talk about until I sit down to talk to people, and that’s why some of my ideas are not that prepared or fleshed out because I’m literally having them in real time. But I do my best.”

Joe concluded his message by giving a shout-out to his “haters.”

“If I pissed you off, I’m sorry. And if you enjoyed the podcast, thank you,” Joe said. “Thank you all the supporters and even thank you to the haters because it’s good to have some haters. It makes you reassess what you’re doing and put things into perspective and I think that’s good too.”

If you missed it, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle recently spoke out on the spread of COVID misinformation on Spotify.