![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I've come to think that the media attacks on Joe Rogan are not just due to his "vaccine misinformation" (and they are certainly not due to his dropping the N-bomb earlier in his podcasting career). I suspect that part of their issue with him is the long-form format of his show. Conversation and communication are dangerous to people who are desperate to present one uniform narrative.
I have to confess that I don't usually listen to podcasts and I've only listened to segments of Rogan's show. I actually like the guy from his UFC commentary, as I mentioned back when he got Covid and the press attacked him relentlessly for his "vaccine skepticism" and use of Ivermectin to treat his case.
Rogan is apparently a bit of a leftist but he is willing to have conversations with people who are on any end of the political spectrum, and evidently he is able to have engaging conversations with them. He had "right wing" media pariah Jordan Petersen on recently, for example, and they had a lengthy, positive conversation.
People with different perspectives engaged in long, not-necessarily adversarial conversations have opportunities to find areas of rapport and agreement. This can reduce polarization and perhaps even cause shifts and realignments of the perspectives of the participants (and their listeners). A good, long conversation can demolish narratives and introduce new ideas into circulation.
Modern media is tailored to short soundbites and brief social media posts or Tweets. This lends to brief and inflammatory content, and quotes and soundbites are often presented out-of-context to present the speaker in a certain light depending on their political agendas (this is done by both political parties and media from both ends of the political spectrum).
Since modern humans have an attention span comparable to goldfish, conversation also gets people focused on something for longer than the minute or so it takes most people to watch a TikTok or read a string of Tweets. Modern journalists don't seem to like this.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/02/15/oh-so-this-is-why-the-new-york-times-didnt-cover-this-weeks-durham-bombshell-n2603300
This article on Townhall discusses a New York Times article that quotes the author as saying that revelations like those presented by the recently publicized findings of the Durham probe "tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time." In other words, the reader may have to think about and understand some nuanced information, so it may not be worth reporting on it at all.
Now, a long-form conversation between two people may be able to dig into the nuances of those revelations, which relate to Hillary Clinton allegedly spying on President Donald Trump even after he took office. But it wouldn't make for a good hit piece or Tweetstorm and it might be bad for the media's established narratives on Hillary and Trump, so those conversations will never happen in the mainstream media.
Good faith dialogue in a non-adversarial format is dangerous to zealots and partisans, because they have no desire to compromise or reach understandings on issues. This lack of dialogue causes people to remain polarized in a dysfunctional binary instead of finding a third position somewhere in the middle.
I have to confess that I don't usually listen to podcasts and I've only listened to segments of Rogan's show. I actually like the guy from his UFC commentary, as I mentioned back when he got Covid and the press attacked him relentlessly for his "vaccine skepticism" and use of Ivermectin to treat his case.
Rogan is apparently a bit of a leftist but he is willing to have conversations with people who are on any end of the political spectrum, and evidently he is able to have engaging conversations with them. He had "right wing" media pariah Jordan Petersen on recently, for example, and they had a lengthy, positive conversation.
People with different perspectives engaged in long, not-necessarily adversarial conversations have opportunities to find areas of rapport and agreement. This can reduce polarization and perhaps even cause shifts and realignments of the perspectives of the participants (and their listeners). A good, long conversation can demolish narratives and introduce new ideas into circulation.
Modern media is tailored to short soundbites and brief social media posts or Tweets. This lends to brief and inflammatory content, and quotes and soundbites are often presented out-of-context to present the speaker in a certain light depending on their political agendas (this is done by both political parties and media from both ends of the political spectrum).
Since modern humans have an attention span comparable to goldfish, conversation also gets people focused on something for longer than the minute or so it takes most people to watch a TikTok or read a string of Tweets. Modern journalists don't seem to like this.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/02/15/oh-so-this-is-why-the-new-york-times-didnt-cover-this-weeks-durham-bombshell-n2603300
This article on Townhall discusses a New York Times article that quotes the author as saying that revelations like those presented by the recently publicized findings of the Durham probe "tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time." In other words, the reader may have to think about and understand some nuanced information, so it may not be worth reporting on it at all.
Now, a long-form conversation between two people may be able to dig into the nuances of those revelations, which relate to Hillary Clinton allegedly spying on President Donald Trump even after he took office. But it wouldn't make for a good hit piece or Tweetstorm and it might be bad for the media's established narratives on Hillary and Trump, so those conversations will never happen in the mainstream media.
Good faith dialogue in a non-adversarial format is dangerous to zealots and partisans, because they have no desire to compromise or reach understandings on issues. This lack of dialogue causes people to remain polarized in a dysfunctional binary instead of finding a third position somewhere in the middle.