MVN - Most Valuable Network

Bob Costas Doesn’t Hate Bloggers After All

Remember those harsh criticisms of bloggers made by Bob Costas last week? Well, those comments set off an uproar around the sports blogosphere — and apparently, Costas took notice. He gave Will Leitch of Deadspin a call yesterday to clarify those comments, expressing that he feels his statements about blogs were misunderstood. Here’s a quote that kinda summarizes his main point in the interview with Deadspin:

I don’t have any problem at all with the mainstream media being challenged or supplemented by new media. No entity has a monopoly over good writing from a valid point of view. In that sense, the more the merrier. In fact, many bloggers, on numerous subjects, sports included, are talented, humorous and bring fresh perspectives.

My commentary was aimed solely at a portion of Internet sports discourse, an unfortunately large portion, that consists of nothing more than potshots, ad hominem arguments, ignorance and invective. No one who is familiar with the general tone of public discourse, whether it be sports, politics, whatever, can honestly deny that much. It comes from that direction.

Well, although I still take exception to his initial comments, I see his point, and I give the man credit for clarifying the arguments he was attempting to make in the first place. Actually, although he’s still making too large of a generalization about the state of internet sports discourse, I think his assertions should be taken somewhat seriously. The problems Costas cites, though, are not isolated to the internet.

While I fully believe the vast majority of sports blogs avoid devolving into the name-calling and ignorant discussion that we often see around the internet, there are definitely some that fit Costas’ description pretty well. But the same is true for any form of communication. There will inevitably be a few bad apples in the sports blogosphere, and there will also be a few on sports television, radio, and the print media.

Perhaps Costas would have been better served to extend his criticisms about sports discussion on the internet to all forms of sports media. I mean, when he talks about “potshots, ad hominem arguments, ignorance and invective” in internet communication, you could undoubtedly extend that characterization to guys in the mainstream media like Colin Cowherd, Jim Rome, Skip Bayless, Stephen A. Smith, and Jay Mariotti. Costas can’t see the proverbial forest through the trees in this matter — what he views as a problem isolated to internet sports discourse is actually an issue for ALL forms of sports media.

So I’m left with mixed feelings about Costas. On one hand, I applaud the guy for acknowledging that there are plenty of sports blogs that offer fresh perspectives and contribute a great deal to the sports writing scene. However, he also seems unwilling to focus any criticism towards the mainstream media, and is merely using the internet as a scapegoat for the dark side of today’s sports discourse. The internet is certainly partially responsible for the occasionally cringe-worthy state of sports discourse, but if you think it’s the sole culprit, then you haven’t been paying close enough attention to the state of the media.

I still don’t think I’ll ever again consider myself a fan of Costas, but hey…at least us bloggers can take solace in the fact that Bob doesn’t hate ALL of us, right? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to write articles full of potshots, ad hominem arguments, ignorance and invective about the fact that Duke sucks, Belichick is a cheater, and Kobe is a loser.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 4:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.