American podcaster Joe Rogan apologized for the use of racist language this Saturday (5), the same day that The New York Times reported that Spotify, the platform that distributes the program presented by him, deleted some of the most offensive episodes of the attraction. .
“My most sincere and humble apologies,” Rogan said in a five-minute Instagram video, calling it the “most regrettable and shameful thing” he has had to publicly address.
The apology comes after the release of a compilation of old videos in which the podcaster appears using the word “nigga”, an offensive way in which whites addressed blacks at the time of slavery, but which is now used colloquially in hip-hop in the United States.
The term, however, continues to sound pejorative when uttered by a white person, and Rogan, 54, acknowledged that this is not a word for him to use. For the podcaster, some of his lines were taken out of context, but the content was “awful, even for me” and terrible in context as well.
“Never used [termos racistas] to be racist, because I’m not racist,” he declared. “But every time you’re in a situation where you have to say you’re not racist, you’ve made a huge mistake.”
The New York Times reported that about 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” were deleted by Spotify — the streaming service declined to comment.
Rogan faces another controversy after he published a three-hour interview with American immunologist Robert Malone, who drew parallels between Nazi Germany and the US today, citing that society was being “hypnotized” into believing in immunizers against Covid. and sanitary measures to combat the pandemic. The episode was published on December 31.
Days later, a group of scientists and health professionals told Spotify false data about vaccination and Covid-19 on the podcast, but the company chose to keep the episode on the platform – a move contrary to YouTube, which took down the content on the platform. official channel of the program and the attempts of other users to upload the video.
Subsequently, several artists decided to remove their music from Spotify, as a form of protest. The initiative was led by singer Neil Young and was joined by Joni Mitchell and the trio David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. Young alone had 2.4 million followers on the platform and over 6 million monthly listeners. The American media also reported that Taylor Swift fans have been pressuring the singer to follow the campaign.
Commenting on the controversy, Rogan defended continuing to welcome guests with “controversial points of view”, but said he was open to balancing those perspectives. “I don’t just want to show the opinion that is contrary to the current narrative. I want to show all opinions, so that we can understand what is happening. And not only about Covid, but everything”, he said in a post on Instagram.
Spotify announced on Sunday (30) that all podcasts that mention Covid-19 will have links to factual, scientifically proven information about the pandemic – something similar to what happens on social networks like Instagram. According to the platform, more than 20,000 episodes related to the coronavirus have already been removed since the beginning of the pandemic due to misinformation.
“We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator freedom of expression [de conteúdo]at the same time we have to balance it with the security of our users”, wrote the CEO and one of the company’s founders, Daniel Ek, in a public letter.
“In this role, it’s important to me that we don’t take the position of censoring content, while making sure there are rules and consequences for those who violate them.”
The podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” is estimated to attract about 11 million listeners per episode and, according to The Wall Street Journal, Spotify would have paid more than US$ 100 million (R$ 532 million) for the exclusivity of the show. attraction. The podcaster has 14.4 million followers on Instagram and 8.2 million on Twitter. As a comparison, on these social networks, US President Joe Biden has 17.6 million and 32.3 million followers, respectively.
Source: Folha
