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Bob Costas has ripped the upcoming Olympics in China, saying the IOC deserves “disdain and disgust” for being shameless about conducting the Games in regions with human rights abuses.
Costas appeared on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with Brian Stelter on Sunday.
“The IOC deserves all of the disdain and disgust for going back to China yet again,” Costas said, noting that the Olympics were in Beijing in 2008 and Russia in 2014. and that he worked on those Games as a broadcaster in his lengthy time at NBC.
“They’re shameless about this stuff. And so, this takes place not only amid COVID, but as you mentioned, the restrictions on press freedom and the sense that everyone there is being monitored in some way.
“We had that feeling in Beijing in 2008. If anything, it’s been ramped up now. It isn’t just NBC. Any network that broadcasts big sports is simultaneously in a position of being quasi-journalistic at best. You’re reporting on an event but you’re also promoting that event. News organizations like CNN don’t pay a rights fee to cover the White House. NBC pays a huge rights fee along with the production cost. They want people to watch it. It’s a centerpiece of the entire network strategy.”
Team USA and many other delegations have encouraged athletes to bring “burner” phones to the Olympics so they are not surveilled by the Chinese government.
China has been accused of imposing sterilization, rape and even slavery on the minority Uyghur Muslim population in the country. In December, President Biden signed a bill banning imports from the Xinjiang region of China unless it can be proven the goods were not manufactured with forced labor.
Stelter asked Costas if the geopolitical issues will be brought up by NBC.
“I would anticipate what they’ll do is acknowledge the [geopolitical] issues at the beginning, and then address them only if something specific that cannot be ignored happens during the Games, which very well may happen,” Costas said.
Costas pointed out that COVID-19 restrictions will prevent NBC from taking viewers around China, and panning to exuberant crowds, and that this will hurt the network’s ability to present the Olympics as what former broadcaster Jim McKay called a “travelogue.”
Costas said that in his reporting on the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2014 Sochi Olympics, he tried to present the political dynamics of the United States in comparison to China and Russia, but that the gulf has widened.
“Now, there’s just a greater understanding of everything that China represents,” Costas said. “Obviously there are other great abusers around the world, but given China’s size, influence and resources you can make a very good case — Human Rights Watch has said it’s very high on the list of worst human rights abusers — and people are more aware of it now. It’s almost impossible to paper it over.”
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