BOLDUAN: “@This Hour. Music streaming giant Spotify is responding to public pressure saying it will add a content warning to its most popular podcast. The new policy will warn listeners of the Joe Rogan experience about potential Covid misinformation on the podcast. This comes after several artists starting with Neil Young moved their music off the platform in protest. CNN’s Brian Stelter joins me now with more on this. Brian, what is spotify doing here and is this all because of Neil Young?”
STELTER: “I think it’s because of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and other artists. And we don’t know how many complained privately. We also don’t know how many subscribers either canceled threatened to cancel over the weekend. But clearly, Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify was under enough pressure that he took these very urgent actions on Sunday afternoon. And here are three of these examples, Kate, of what somebody says they’re doing. They’re publishing the rules they have in place for podcasts. They are working toward adding content advisory around any podcast’s episode involving Covid-19, and they’re going to test ways to highlight the rules. So basically they’re doing what Twitter and Facebook and other platforms did two years ago. This is nothing original, nothing novel. They are belatedly responding to the pressure from artists and subscribers. But here is what Ek said in a statement, quote, ‘It is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure there are rules in place for those who violate them.’ You can hear the tension right there in that quote. He doesn’t want to be a censor but he need that rules in place to protect his audience. Now I did not mention Joe Rogan at all but Rogan is at the center of this because of the guests he’s had on his podcast and the anti-vaccination narratives coming out of this popular podcast. Here’s what Rogan said in a Instagram video overnight.”
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Rogan: “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 we can maybe find a better point of view. I don’t want to just show the contrary opinion to what the narrative is. I want to show all kinds of opinions.”
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STELTER: “Which sounds great but not all opinions are created equal. 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 speakers like Rogan are trusted by people that don’t trust newsrooms, we have a tension, a problem that’s much bigger than Spotify, much bigger than any single platform, Kate. But that’s — it is the heart of this right now.”