Popular podcast host Joe Rogan has reportedly left some staffers at Spotify "outraged," Insider is reporting.
Rogan has more than 11 million listeners for his "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, which was bought by Spotify for $100 million last year.
According to Insider, Spotify has had discussions with staffers who have expressed concern about Rogan’s show.
"I'm personally bothered by his transphobic comments and am concerned with the way he might spread misinformation," one employee wrote last fall in an internal channel for Spotify employees on the professional networking app Fishbowl, Insider reported.
In a forum in September, another employee said many LGBTQ colleagues felt "unwelcome and alienated" after discussing Rogan with management.
The Wall Street Journal, quoting people familiar with the matter, said some at the forum expressed concern over material on the show they felt was anti-transgender.
And some staffers asked for the ability to fact-check his shows before they went live. His critics say he fuels conspiracy theories, while his supporters praise his truthfulness and open-mindedness.
One of those who supports Rogan said it's just "a loud minority of people who are outraged."
And others acknowledged that controversy is a part of Rogan’s appeal, the Journal reported in October.
"He is the biggest voice by far that’s going to accelerate our business," an employee told the WSJ at the time. "Getting him on Spotify — and soon exclusively — is going to help bring a lot more audiences onto the platform, and hopefully we can spread that to other programming."
In May, the New York Post reported that Rogan said on one episode that straight white men are being silenced because of "woke" culture.
"You can never be woke enough, that's the problem," he said, adding that, "it keeps going. It keeps going further and further and further down the line, and if you get to the point where you capitulate, where you agree to all these demands, it’ll eventually get to — straight white men are not allowed to talk. Because it's your privilege to express yourself when other people of color have been silenced throughout history."
Rogan added that, "it will be, you’re not allowed to go outside," explaining that "there’s a lot of people that are taking advantage of this weirdness in our culture, and then that becomes their thing. Their thing is calling people out for their privilege, calling people out for their position."
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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