And also that person with the Punisher skull patch and an AR-15 standing in front of the capitol building asking "if climate change is real then why am I wearing a coat?" is the new mainstream climate science!
And the person who claims that God personally came to Philadelphia to write the Constitution and that only he knows what God really meant, is the new mainstream Constitutional Law and History scholar.
It's a weird sort of masochism that the New York Times pays this person to undermine the entire project of evidence-based journalism.
There is a distinction to be made between entertainment and journalism. Joe Rogan is an entertainer. He works in the entertainment media business. The inability to distinguish between media that entertains and media that informs is the problem here.
Plenty of people are entertained by Joe Rogan. That's fine. But if Rogan actually cared about informing people then he would do some actual freaking research before interviewing people.
With great influence comes great responsibility. Joe Rogan feels no responsibility to the truth. The mainstream media in a functioning democracy should take, as its starting premise, a responsibility to the truth.
Joe Rogan is the Donald Trump of Edward R. Murrows.
A journalist's job is to not get duped, so as to help their audience avoid getting duped, especially on subjects that impact their lives. I start from the (perhaps naive) assumption that my fellow humans prefer to not be duped by others.
I prefer my politicians not to be bullshitters. That's why I don't admire President Trump. I also prefer my journalists to not be bullshitters, which is why I don't listen to Rogan. There's a place in the world for bullshitters...but it's not in politics or political media.
But hey, Donald Trump is President and Joe Rogan has one of the most listened-to podcasts in the country. So what the hell do I know? The market has spoken, right?
You can follow @SethCotlar.
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