What was ESPN thinking when it decided to use bogus blimp shots of the action during its Monday Night Football game? The Worldwide Leader in sports used old blimp shots of the Jacksonville stadium. But wait, it gets better.
It turns out that some of the file footage used wasn’t of the right stadium. Some shots of the Carolina Panthers’ stadium were also used.
The brass at ESPN apologized for using the Charlotte shots but didn’t seem to have a problem with the old Jacksonville blimp views, saying that the images were never implied to be live.
Hmmm. Who would be so crazy to think that blimp shots from live sporting event would be live?
I have no problem if ESPN didn’t want to pay for any aerial shots for the game. But coming out of commercial breaks, you don’t have to use file footage. I’m sure there were plenty of wide shots inside the stadium that could have been used for the same purpose. After all, football games were somehow televised before the days of blimp cameras.
Why does this matter? The manipulation of images and words is a form of propaganda.
Want more people at your rally? Then digitally copy and paste the crowd to fill the screen.
Remember when President Clinton, Hillary, and Chelsea were shown walking to the Presidential helicopter shortly after he admitted to the Monica Lewinsky scandal? The image showed a very obvious emotional distance between the family members. You don’t get that if you would have simply recycled a previous shot of the President and his family boarding the helicopter.
EPSN doesn’t have the right to choose which reality it shows the public. Either pay for the blimp or focus your shots on the game.