Bob Costas, the face of NBC’s Olympic coverage for more than 20 years, said the network has been dealt the “worst hand imaginable” with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
“My friends and colleagues at NBC have been dealt the worst hand imaginable,” Costas told The New York Times in an article published a day before the Olympics officially began.
NBC is covering the games as the U.S. and several other countries stage diplomatic protests of the event over concerns about ongoing human rights abuses happening in China, including against the predominately Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority group in Xinjiang. The country has also been put on blast by human rights groups and activists.
“The circumstances put an inevitable damper on the whole thing,” Costas said to the Times. “The average person now fully understands the nature of the Chinese regime. It’s not something that just news nerds are aware of. This is broadly understood.”
Researchers have estimated that more than 1 million Uyghurs and other minorities have been put into forced labor camps in the Xinjiang region. China has denied any human rights violations, claiming that the camps are designed to teach job skills and counter radicalism.
China has also been criticized for its crackdown on democratic freedoms in Hong Kong. A veteran activist in the city was arrested on Friday, the day of the Olympic opening ceremony, for planning a protest outside the Chinese Liaison’s Office.
“Certainly there are challenges, and certainly there are harsh realities,” Costas told the Times. “But I think the beauty of sports and the beauty of Olympic sports is really needed right now more than ever, and that’s the story we want to tell.”
“But inevitably, no matter how good a job they do, those circumstances are going to have an impact,” he continued.
NBC also has to navigate the challenges of the coronavirus during a continued surge in cases around the world driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant. Last month, the network announced that it would not send announcing teams to the games due to concerns over COVID-19 and that the teams would instead call the events remotely from the U.S.
NBC has exclusive broadcasting rights for the Olympics for the next decade.