Bob Costas Condemns Mainstream Press for Doing ‘MAGA Media’: ‘There Really Isn’t Two Sides’
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Legendary sportscaster Bob Costas criticized the media over its handling of President Donald Trump’s second term during an awards ceremony on Monday night.
Costas took several major media organizations to task at this year’s Mirror Awards in New York. At the ceremony, hosted by Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, Costas received the Fred Dressler Leadership Award for making “distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public’s understanding of the media.”
In a speech touching on his career in broadcasting and the state of the media business through the years, Costas spoke candidly about the press in the Trump era, and singled out ABC News, CBS News, and CNN.
He slammed ABC News for settling a lawsuit for $15 million after the president sued the outlet for defamation stemming from comments by ABC 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 the show in March 2024. A jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll, but did not find him liable for 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 said of the decision to settle. “They didn’t have to pay a $15 million ransom.”
Next, Costas condemned Paramount, which is controlled by Shari Redstone, for its attempts to settle another Trump suit that legal experts have widely dismissed as frivolous. Trump rejected Paramount’s offer of $15 million to settle. Paramount is looking to merge with Skydance Media in a move that would require the approval of Trump’s Federal Communications Commission. In April, longtime 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens resigned and said in a memo to staff that the program no longer enjoyed editorial independence from the corporate side.
“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 continued. “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.”
Costas went on to acknowledge that media organizations make mistakes and have “blindspots and misplaced narratives,” though he added a caveat and took a swipe at CNN:
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.
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