Bob Costas rips mainstream U.S. news outlets for caving to Donald Trump
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Legendary American sportscaster Bob Costas ripped some mainstream news outlets in the U.S. for caving to President Donald Trump during the first months of his second term in office.
The veteran broadcaster made the comments while being honoured with the Fred Dressler Leadership Award at the Mirror Awards ceremony Monday in New York City for his decades covering the Olympics, baseball, football, basketball, golf and other sports on TV and in print.
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During his speech, Costas said the press is under attack.
“What’s happening now are not matters of small degree,” he told the audience. “They’re different in kind to anything certainly in my lifetime and maybe in the history of the American presidency.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDlYgkoHiu8&t=289s
Costas took aim specifically at ABC News and CBS News for not fighting back after Trump filed lawsuits against both networks.
In ABC’s case, the president — through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) — “intimidated ABC into refuting George Stephanopoulos” after the star anchor was sued for libel for erroneously reporting on air that Trump was found liable in a civil suit for the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll.
“All they should have said was, ‘George misspoke,'” Costas said. “The president, that paragon of virtue, was only found guilty of sexual assault, not rape, so we stand corrected. They didn’t have to pay a $15-million ransom.”
ABC issued an apology in December and paid the settlement to a Trump-related foundation as well as $1 million for attorney fees.
For CBS News, Costas explained that the FCC could hold up a merger between the broadcaster’s parent company Paramount Global, controlled by Shari Redstone, and Skydance Media after Trump sued 60 Minutes before November’s presidential election over accusations that it deceptively edited an interview with Democratic presidential rival Kamala Harris.
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“And did Shari Redstone, because she wants to affect 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,” Costas said.
“60 Minutes 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 also took a shot at CNN for having balanced coverage of Trump and called the cable news broadcaster “MAGA media.”
“There really isn’t two sides to much of what Donald Trump represents,” he said.
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