CNN's Brian Stelter complains about viewers who trust Joe Rogan instead of news networks
CNN's Brian Stelter frets over Joe Rogan's audience and the trust gap in the media.
CNN's Brian Stelter was roasted by critics Tuesday for complaining that a large number of Americans trusted comedian Joe Rogan and the contents of his podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience," rather than "real newsrooms" like his own.
During a Monday appearance on "At This Hour," the left-wing pundit reacted to Rogan's apology video, which followed a number of artists removing their content from Spotify in protest over what they referred to as "misinformation" on his podcast concerning the coronavirus pandemic, by arguing more people should be watching CNN rather than those "who just wing it."
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Stelter began by reading a statement by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek committing to having rules in place to push back on misinformation on the platform, but noted that it didn't mention Rogan. He then played Rogan's message in response to criticism and musicians pulling their music from Spotify, which included a promise to show more wide-ranging opinions in the future.
"Which sounds great, but not all opinions are created equal," Stelter said. "You think about major newsrooms like CNN that have health departments and desks and operations that work hard on verifying information on Covid-19. And then you have talk show stars like Joe Rogan who just wing it, who make it up as they go along."
"And because figures like Rogan are trusted by people that don’t trust real newsrooms, we have a tension, a problem, that's much bigger than Spotify, much bigger than any single platform," he added.
Critics took to social media to blast Stelter, with some calling his complaints "laughable," and others accusing CNN of creating propaganda rather than reporting the news.
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"The ‘newsroom’ that pushed 4 years of Russia collusion and ‘mostly peaceful’ protests, or downplayed stories such as covid's origins, can't figure out why people started tuning them out," wrote Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., while Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich joked that she couldn't stop laughing at Stelter's comments.
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One critic argued that Rogan's track record on getting facts about the pandemic correct was better than Stelter's, while another declared that Stelter was "beyond parody."
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"I trust perhaps everyone else in the world more than I trust the propaganda press/TV. No one has decisively proven their untrustworthiness more than our corrupt media," Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway wrote, while another critic said they'd "rather trust random names from a phone book than ‘newsrooms’ like CNN."