In fiery response, CNN doubles down, refuses to apologize to Joe Rogan for ‘bruising his ego’

CNN vehemently refused to apologize to Joe Rogan after the network repeatedly smeared him for taking ivermectin after he contracted COVID, derisively referring to the drug as “horse dewormer,” a grossly misleading characterization to discourage Americans from seeking alternative treatments for the virus.

Instead of acknowledging its falsehoods, the self-proclaimed “most trusted name in news” doubled down in a defiant statement, saying that the only thing it did wrong was to “bruise the ego of a popular podcaster who pushed dangerous conspiracy theories.”

Rogan, who has been an outspoken critic of vaccine mandates, President Joe Biden, and health officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci set off a wave of celebration among leftists when he announced that he had been infected, as many gloated and some likely wished for this death.

But they were severely disappointed when Rogan quickly rebounded by turning to a number of remedies including ivermectin, “we immediately threw the kitchen sink at it,” the hugely popular podcaster announced in a video posted to social media.

Rather than admit that ivermectin has been successfully used to treat COVID and that the multifaceted drug has been used billions of times for treatment of a number of illnesses including malaria, CNN repeatedly mocked Rogan with its insistence that he took “horse dewormer,” a brazen lie.

While there is a version of ivermectin that is an anti-parasitical treatment for animals, the human version has been hailed for its effectiveness for decades, winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Rogan punched back, threatening to sue CNN and even more importantly, luring the network’s top medical “expert” Dr. Sanjay Gupta into an interview on his podcast where he sprung an ambush on the squirming television doctor, calling out his employer for lying and putting him on the spot about whether he was personally troubled by the dishonesty.

The dismantling of Gupta represented a serious public relations problem for a network that is already widely distrusted and despised by Americans, one that was made worse last week when CNN’s own Mary Katharine Ham defended Rogan, going off script against her employer by tweeting “Rogan is right that it’s dishonest to say he took horse dewormer when he did not,”

For any who may have believed that CNN would be shamed into walking back the “horse dewormer” smears, their hopes were dashed when the network provided its statement from a CNN spokesperson to The Washington Post attacking Rogan:

“The heart of this debate has been purposely confused and ultimately lost. It’s never been about livestock versus human dosage of Ivermectin. The issue is that a powerful voice in the media, who by example and through his platform, sowed doubt in the proven and approved science of vaccines while promoting the use of an unproven treatment for covid-19 — a drug developed to ward off parasites in farm animals. The only thing CNN did wrong here was bruise the ego of a popular podcaster who pushed dangerous conspiracy theories and risked the lives of millions of people in doing so.”

 

Some might suggest that CNN is actually the one promoting the “dangerous conspiracy theories” and risking lives with its misleading propaganda about ivermectin that only serves to prevent the sick from seeking early treatment that could potentially prevent them from ending up on a ventilator.

How over the top was CNN’s statement?

Washington Post media critic Eric Wemple cited a poison control expert who, in an email, told Wemple that those who are “prescribed the FDA human version [of ivermectin] then you’re not taking a horse pill,”

Wemple also ripped CNN’s statement, saying it “sounds more like the work of an advocacy group than a journalism outfit. The ‘issue,’ actually, begins and ends with the integrity of CNN’s content. If we take Rogan’s prescription claim at face value — and CNN hasn’t challenged it — then the network’s coverage was slanted in some cases and straight-up incorrect in others.”

“So in this instance, you don’t have to endorse Rogan to abhor CNN’s coverage of this topic. Here’s a network, after all, that prides itself on impeccable factual hygiene, a place where there’s no conceptual hair too fine to split, no political statement too sprawling to flyspeck. It’s tough living by your own standards,” he added.

Just when it appears that CNN had hit rock bottom, the network finds yet another way to go even lower.

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