Tag: Bob Costas
Extortion of the press
I've always been a fan of Bob Costas, the legendary sportscaster that wrote a book on baseball back in the early 2000s that made me think he is the one guy in the world who could solve all of MLB's problems if he became baseball commissioner. He might be a little too Yankee-centric, but he's a pro's pro and he always knows what he's talking about when he's on screen.
Costas was awarded the Mirror Award for “distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public’s understanding of the media” last Monday and used the platform of his acceptance speech to scold the news media in general and several media outlets in particular for failing to commit journalism.
Most of his address surrounded the sports news business, which included this beauty: "Network TV sports is the only business I can think of where the buyer must continually flatter the seller. 'Here's your billion dollars or more, and if we pulled the Brinks armored truck up to Park Avenue and haven't delivered it in the proper denominations, we apologize profusely and we'll be right back.'" Broadening his focus to news generally, he deplored the reluctance of (primarily) TV news from "identifying and acknowledging the elephants in the room."
"Beyond sports," he went on, "the free press is under attack." Excoriating ABC and CBS for "paying ransom" in the form of settlements to frivolous lawsuits brought against them by President Convicted Felon, Costas articulated what to most of us is the blindingly obvious but to news organizations apparently a novel concept: Journalism is about reporting fact, not propagating two sides of an argument. Especially when one side is completely nonsensical BS.
“What’s happening now are not matters of small degree,” Costas said, citing "ongoing assaults on the basic idea of a free press."
Costas approached the close of his speech with this:
Donald Trump’s view of the world ... is through a prism of what benefits him, there are no higher ideals. There are no principles at work other than what benefits him.
...Because he is the president, 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 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.
Seems like a good place to close this post as well.
Tagged
Baseball,
Politics,
President VonClownstick,
Bob Costas,
Posted on June 12, 2025 at 5:28PM | Permalink | 
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