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Jon Stewart defends Joe Rogan, compares 'Covid misinformation' to opposing Iraq War

Jon Stewart recalled how at a time opposing the Iraq War was seen as propagating misinformation

Jon Stewart spoke in defense of commentator Joe Rogan on his podcast 'The Problem with Jon Stewart'. The 59-year-old stated that there was a time when opposing the Iraq War was considered promoting misinformation. Stewart said that he was "very vocal" in his opposition to the Iraq War in 2003, but the majority of mainstream media, including the NYT reporters, used to cheer the war on.

"The New York Times, right, was a giant purveyor of misinformation, and disinformation. And that's as vaunted a media organization as you can find, but there was no accountability for them. 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 by a platform. Nobody is, but my point is, these are shifting sands, and I think I get concerned with, well, who gets to decide?" Stewart asked.

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"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. 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," Stewart added.

Stewart also mentioned that he knows Rogan personally, which made him "grant more understanding and nuance" to the podcaster. "It's very easy to attack Rogan. And I'm not saying that that's not your right and that there aren't things there to talk about. But what I'm saying is let's be careful, because the sands can shift," he said.

Harvard professor Joan Donovan, who was a guest on this episode of Stewart's podcast discussed the difference between misinformation and disinformation. She said disinformation is sharing inaccurate information, most of the time for political purposes, with veracity and intent. While misinformation is characterized as the spread of false information, regardless of an intent to deceive, and is often never error-corrected.

Stewart shared the link to the podcast episode on his Twitter and captioned it, "Dr Donovan!!! Thanks for the great talk…I’m just going to tell people I graduated from Harvard now! ⁦@BostonJoan come see us again soon!"

This isn't the first time Stewart has defended Rogan. Previously, the host spoke in favor of the 54-year-old commentator, praising his willingness to correct mistakes and being open to facts that disproved his beliefs. Stewart claimed that someone like Tucker Carlson would never do the same.