Jon Stewart Defends Joe Rogan By Citing Opposition to Iraq War: ‘I Was Promoting What They Would Call Misinformation’

Jon Stewart has come to Joe Rogan’s defense yet again by recalling to a time when opposing the Iraq War was considered promoting misinformation.

Stewart sat down with Harvard professor Dr. Joan Donovan, in addition to writers Jay Jurden and Kris Acimovic, on Thursday’s edition of The Problem With Jon Stewart, in which they discussed “Rogan-gate” and how to combat misinformation.

The conversation comes as several artists, including Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Graham Nash, their fellow Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young bandmates David Crosby and Stephen Stills, and India Arie, are protesting Spotify largely over Rogan’s tendency to push misinformation on his show.

Stewart began by noting that he knows Rogan personally, which made him “grant more understanding and nuance” to the comedian podcaster.

He went on to cite a point Donovan made earlier in the episode, in which she said some want the benefits of a platform without the accountability that comes with it.

Stewart then brought up media coverage at the start of the Iraq War.

“The New York Times, right, was a giant purveyor of misinformation, and disinformation,” Stewart said. “And that’s as vaunted a media organization as you can find, but there was no accountability for them.”

He noted that while he was “very vocal” in his opposition to the Iraq War in 2003, the majority of those in the mainstream media, including reporters at the Times, cheered the war on.

“Couldn’t I have gone down and fallen down this — if Viacom or Comedy Central had wanted to censor me — or had wanted to take me off the — look, I’m not owed a platform. Nobody is,” he said, adding, “But my point is, these are shifting sands, and I think I get concerned with, well, who gets to decide?”

“I mean, in the Iraq War, I was on the side of what you would think, on the mainstream, is misinformation. I was promoting what they would call misinformation but it turned out to be right years later,” he continued. “And the establishment media was wrong, and not only were they wrong in some respects, you could make the case that they enabled a war that killed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people and never paid a price for it and never had accountability.”

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