Bob Costas has a chilling warning for the future of journalism.
On Monday, while accepting a lifetime achievement Mirror Award at a ceremony at the Edison Ballroom in New York (via CNN), the storied sports caster warned the audience of “ongoing assaults” on free press by the Trump administration, adding that “democracy as we know it” is “under attack.”
“What’s happening now are not matters of small degree,” Costas said. “They’re different in kind to anything certainly in my lifetime and maybe in the history of the American presidency.”
Costas made it clear that the major news outlets are not “without fault” and that “legacy or mainstream media” have their fair share of “blind spots” and “misplaced narratives.” He added, however, “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… I’ll stay where we are.”
He went on to say that during the height of his popularity, he would sometimes hear from fans, “‘I used to love Bob Costas, but then he turned political.’” Costas said to those who share that sentiment, “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 spent 40 years at NBC Sports, exiting the network in 2019. He said that the industry “tragically” misses the mark on connecting the world of sports with important social and political topics.
Political issues in sports, he added, “need to be covered, not during the game, not in between pitches, or in between free throws, but at some point need to be covered.”
