Joy Behar may think that Joe Rogan is “a horror,” but that doesn’t mean she thinks his podcast should be removed from Spotify entirely. And for the most part, her co-hosts on “The View” agree with her.
During Wednesday’s “Hot Topics” discussion, the panel of women began by discussing Howard Stern’s defense of Joe Rogan this week, in which he admitted that though he is not friendly with the podcast host, “I don’t want to see Joe Rogan cancelled.” With that, Behar agreed, citing the First Amendment.
“I mean, I agree that Joe Rogan is a horror. A horror,” Behar said. “But the way to counter that speech is with more speech. The way to counter it is with boycotts.”
You can watch the full segment from “The View” in the video above.
Behar added that she admires Neil Young for demanding this week that his own music catalog be pulled from Spotify, because of the vaccine misinformation shared on Rogan’s podcast. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,” Young wrote in a now-deleted statement online.
“Maybe other musicians will follow suit, and that would be legitimate,” Behar said. “It’s not a cancel culture, it’s a consequence culture. And the way we handle it is we don’t buy Spotify. We ignore Spotify.”
At that, Sunny Hostin chimed in, arguing that Spotify should still be “good corporate citizens” and draw some lines on Rogan.
“I mean I’m not saying that Joe Rogan should be removed from Spotify,” Hostin noted. “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 his podcast, that says ‘This is misinformation.’ How about removing some of the podcasts that disseminate this misinformation?”
Sara Haines then chimed in to remind her co-hosts that Spotify has done exactly that. Last April, Spotify did make the decision to fully remove more than 40 episodes of Rogan’s podcast from its service, though an official reason was not given.
Behar then noted that Rogan is protected by the First Amendment, comparing him to Fox News.
“You can try to get Fox off your cable vision if you want, or disclaimers, but you can’t just cancel the show,” Behar added. “Because we have the First Amendment.”