Bob Costas Accuses Legacy Outlets of Doing ‘MAGA Media’: ‘There Really Isn’t Two Sides’
Legendary sports play-by-play man Bob Costas thinks that the corporate press is simply doing “MAGA media,” leaving the news industry without a dissenting or oppositional voice.
On Monday night, Costas blasted corporate media outlets at the Mirror Awards, held in New York City. At the event, held by Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, of which Costas is an alumnus, the longtime American sportscaster received the Fred Dressler Leadership Award for making “distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public’s understanding of the media.”
However, Costas didn’t use his speech to reflect on his years in sports media alone. Instead, he singled out ABC, CBS, and CNN for what he viewed as an abdication of their duties as watchdogs of the news during the Trump era.
Specifically, Costas blasted ABC News for settling a $15 million defamation lawsuit filed against them by the president over comments made by ABC’s This Week host George Stephanopoulos.
“Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape,” Stephanopoulos said on an edition of ABC This Week in March 2024. In reality, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll, not rape.
“All they should’ve said was, ‘George misspoke. The president, that paragon of virtue, was only found guilty of sexual assault, not rape. So we stand corrected,” Costas explained. “They didn’t have to pay a $15 million ransom.”
Costas also chastised Shari Redstone, head of Paramount, accusing her of paying a $20 million “ransom” and “besmirching” 60 Minutes, thereby robbing them of their journalistic independence to facilitate a merger with Skydance Media that requires approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
“And did Shari Redstone, because she wants to affect a merger that Trump’s FCC can stand in the way of, did she have to besmirch and undercut the gold standard in our lifetime of broadcast journalism, 60 minutes?” Costas said. “Paying $20 million in ransom to Trump is just the cost of doing business when there’s billions of dollars at stake. These are ongoing assaults on the basic idea of a free press.”
While Costas did allow for the occasional “mistake” among his legacy media brethren, he did not spare CNN from his ire.
But if the answer to that is MAGA media, if the answer to that is Donald Trump’s view of the world, which is only through a prism of what benefits him, there are no higher ideals. There are no principles at work other than what benefits him. I’ll stay with where we are without correction if the correction is what Donald Trump represents.
And what also has happened here is that, because he is the president, to a certain extent, who he is and what he does, and what is done in his name, has been normalized so that responsible journalists have to pretend that there’s always two sides to this. There really isn’t two sides to much of what Donald Trump represents.
If someone says – and the idea that you have to find somebody who will not just defend Donald Trump, but valorize it, even on CNN or wherever else, just in the name of being balanced– look, if someone is contending that the Earth is flat, in order to appear objective, you are not required to say, “Well, maybe it might be oblong.” No, it’s not.
Certain things are just true. And regrettably, something that’s true in America right now is that the President of the United States has absolutely no regard, and in fact has contempt, for basic American principles and basic common decency.
And again, and I’ve heard this on occasion. ‘I used to love Bob Costas, but then when he turned political…’
And of course, when I did that, every good thing I did for 40 years was washed away. Now I suck. You know what? If that’s what you think, and that’s how you think, and you think it in defense of that guy, I wear that as a badge of honor.
Costas retired from play-by-play work in 2024, after a 44-year career in the business.
