Blame Joe Rogan
How Institutions Lost Trust and Learned to Love the Scapegoat
Joe Rogan is taking heat. His recent takes on Ivermectin and vaccines have drawn fire from Rolling Stone, NPR, and the New York Times. I hear about his transgressions in a text message: “What do you think about Joe Rogan?” The follow-up suggests the question was rhetorical. “I think he’s abusing his platform.” I roll my eyes.
I get why Rogan triggers people. He says dumb shit. He reaches millions with medical opinions he’s unqualified to hold, and during a pandemic, that matters. The concern is legitimate.
But the obsessive focus on one podcaster reveals more about the institutions attacking him than about Rogan himself. The question isn’t how to stop Joe Rogan. It’s why institutions have lost so much trust that a comedian with a microphone has more credibility than CNN.
The recent feud between CNN and Joe Rogan showed exactly why so many people think the media is full of shit.
It started when CNN called Rogan’s COVID treatment a dangerous “horse dewormer.” He’d been prescribed a human dose of Ivermectin by his doctor. Early studies had suggested the drug might help with COVID. Those studies were later retracted for faulty methodology. The evidence was inconclusive—not disproved, but not proven either. CNN skipped the nuance and went with “horse dewormer.”
CNN’s medical expert, Sanjay Gupta, saw an opportunity. He joined Rogan on his podcast to reach an audience skeptical of vaccines. During one tense exchange in their three-hour conversation, Rogan asked why CNN had deliberately mischaracterized his treatment. Gupta admitted CNN got it wrong.
Then came the correction.
Gupta was dragged onto Don Lemon’s show a few days later. Lemon opened by dismissing Gupta’s appearance on Rogan as “tongue-in-cheek.” He demanded Gupta recant. When Gupta tried to explain Rogan’s position fairly, Lemon cut him off and ended the segment.
If Lemon wanted to persuade vaccine skeptics, this was a strange approach. Most skeptics don’t watch CNN. Gupta should have been applauded for meeting them where they are. Instead, CNN signaled to its own audience that it remained the sole legitimate authority. For many of us—liberals included—it only diminished that authority further. Even the Washington Post called out their reporting.
The Rogan feud wasn’t about Ivermectin. It was a masterclass in how institutions lose trust: by asserting authority they haven’t earned.
The path here was decades in the making.
In 1985, Reagan repealed the fairness doctrine, the FCC rule requiring broadcasters to present public issues with opposing viewpoints. Conservative voices who felt shut out of television turned to talk radio. Rush Limbaugh went national in 1988 and launched the “liberal media bias” meme that persists today. News stopped being a public service. It became a business. Conflict sold.
CNN launched in 1980, but cable news didn’t dominate until a white Ford Bronco fled police on the 405. The OJ Simpson trial made 24-hour news a spectator sport. The profit motive took over.
The institutions that translated reality to the public—media, politics, academia—became a closed loop. Headquarters clustered in coastal cities. Leadership recruited from elite universities. A professional class emerged, culturally severed from those who couldn’t ride the new economy. The gatekeepers started talking only to each other.
Newt Gingrich accelerated the political side. When Republicans took Congress in 1995, he reframed politics as existential combat. The opposing party wasn’t a difference of philosophy. It was an existential threat. Every election since has been sold this way. Both sides.
Then came the disasters no one answered for.
The War on Terror. The 2008 financial crisis. Both devastated the poor and working class. Despite the scandals, the lies, the exposed criminality, media and political leaders delivered no real accountability. The conflicts of interest were obvious. Trust collapsed.
Obama represented hope for something different. He delivered a symbolic victory for the professional class instead. The appearance of a post-racial society without structural change. Meanwhile, an invisible poor was left behind. Opioid-ravaged towns. Dying farms locked out of subsidies captured by factory operations. Food deserts at the margins. The professional class moved on to cultural battles and dismissed the dissenters as deplorable.
Then wondered why they stopped listening.
We’re left with two choices in a politics flattened beyond recognition. On one side, a dominant elite consensus. On the other, angry voters convinced we’re full of shit.
The Republican Party stopped being an ideological party. It became an opposition party. Opposition parties don’t need ideas. They need an enemy.
CNN kept handing them one.
The Rogan obsession isn’t about Rogan. He’s a symptom. The disease is a gatekeeping class that lost its credibility and has no idea how to earn it back.
They had decades. After Iraq. After 2008. After the opioid epidemic. They chose symbolic gestures over accountability. Now they watch their authority drain to podcasters and Substacks. Their response is to insist louder that they are the experts, they are the responsible voices, they deserve trust.
It’s not working. Attacking the competition won’t fix it.
The question isn’t what to do about Joe Rogan. It’s whether the institutions that once translated reality to the public can learn to earn trust again—or whether they’ll keep asserting authority they no longer have, wondering why no one listens.