beIN Sports has been caught deceptively editing footage from a Manchester United press event. Some of United’s new summer signings attended and were asked to shoot a ball through a blow up target. Morgan Schneiderlin, Memphis Depay, and Bastian Schwensteiger all took turns, with Manchester United legend Bryan Robson looking on.
beIN Sports would later report on the video, with the footage looking a little different. In the video posted below, there is the reported footage from beIN Sports and the raw footage, courtesy of the Daily Mail. The beIN Sports reported video has clearly been edited to show all three players having great difficulty hitting the target.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVhcRcW0pCY&feature=youtu.be
The shot of Bryan Robson was also taken out of context. The beIN Sport reporter claims that Robson was “looking visibly upset” at the poor display. When viewed in the raw footage, though, he just looks…kind of bored. Not much better, but the context is important.
This is a clear and malicious twisting of fact that you would hope would be considered beneath a channel trying to establish itself as a credible news source. It should be noted that beIN Sport is owned by the same group that owns PSG. PSG, the team that just finished a protracted and ugly transfer move with Manchester United over Angel di Maria. These are facts. Conclude what you will from them. More than likely, it was an intern who happens to be a Liverpool or City fan, but a producer should have pumped the brakes on this video before running it. Regardless, releasing this in an edited form to change the context of the story only hurts beIN Sports journalistic integrity.
beIN would go on to make fun of the video a bit more. It may be beIN Sports who ends up looking stupid after this whole affair is said and done, however. Rightly so, I might add. This is an embarrassing sham that has sadly become way too common in news in general.
Credit to Youtube user John Smith for the video and Reddit users /u/mrpricklefingers and /u/toecutter6969.
