Famed sports broadcaster Bob Costas has not been shy about sharing his feelings on the current administration. And on Monday, while accepting a lifetime achievement Mirror Award for his contributions in media, Costas used his speech to address President Donald Trump’s “assaults” on the free press.
“The free press is under attack,” Costas said, as reported by CNN. “Democracy as we know it is under attack.
“What’s happening now are not matters of small degree,” he continued. “They’re different in kind to anything certainly in my lifetime and maybe in the history of the American presidency.”
Costas went on to sharply criticize both ABC and CBS which, in his estimation, have both caved to pressure from the Trump administration in response to frivolous defamation lawsuits that legal experts have deemed meritless. Last year, ABC settled a lawsuit filed by Trump over an incident in which anchor George Stephanopoulos suggested the president was “found liable for rape” when a jury had found him liable for sexual assault.
Now, CBS finds themselves embroiled in a lawsuit where Trump alleges election interference based on what he sees as a deceptively edited clip by 60 Minutes during an interview with former Vice President (and then-presidential candidate) Kamala Harris. The suit comes at a time when CBS parent company Paramount is trying to complete a merger with Skydance Media, which has drawn attention from Trump’s FCC that threatens to block the deal.
“Did [Paramount majority shareholder] Shari Redstone — because she wants to effect a merger that Trump’s FCC could stand in the way of — did she have to besmirch and undercut the gold standard in our lifetime of broadcast journalism, 60 Minutes?” Costas posed, referencing ongoing editorial struggles over at the famed news magazine. “Paying $20 million in ransom to Trump is just the cost of doing business when there’s billions of dollars at stake,” he said.
“These are ongoing assaults on the basic idea of a free press,” Costas continued.
Later in his speech, Costas criticized the modern sports media for not giving adequate coverage to political and social issues that intersect with sports.
“With all the hundreds and hundreds of hours of coverage, let’s say, of the NFL, can’t there be a Meet the Press-style interview of Roger Goodell somewhere?” he asked. “Sports isn’t brain surgery, but it doesn’t have to be brain dead either.”
Since his retirement from NBC in 2019, Costas has been very willing to speak out on what he sees as the media’s shortcomings. Appearing on the Awful Announcing Podcast last year, Costas urged a more journalistic approach to sports coverage.
“I’ve always felt that there is no contradiction of loving sports and doing a good job as a broadcaster or writer of highlighting the drama, the excitement, the shared experience, human emotion, the characters of the people involved — highlighting all those things — I think I did a good job doing that over time. But at the same time saying there’s some issues here that deserve journalistic treatment and deserve commentary in the right proportion at the right time,” he told host Brandon Contes.
No doubt, with the cancellation of shows like HBO’s Real Sports and ESPN’s Outside the Lines, there are fewer and fewer places to get that type of coverage these days.
But issues within sports media feel like small potatoes compared to what Costas’ concerns are with the Trump administration. And anyone who values a free and independent press should probably be equally concerned with the way things are going.
