HBO ripped as libel trial opens

A federal jury in Manhattan heard charges about fiction masquerading as fact on Monday, at the opening of a trial in which HBO faces libel claims over a report on child labor in India. The trial is the culmination of years of litigation over the report on “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” which first aired in September 2008. The report accused Mitre, a UK sporting goods company, of turning a blind eye to the use by contractors or subcontractors of underaged workers for the production of its soccer balls in India. Mitre denies the charges and says it opposes child labor. In his opening statements Mitre lawyer Lloyd Constantine said evidence will show that children depicted in the report as stitching Mitre soccer balls for 5 cents per hour or less were induced to pretend on camera that they were child laborers. “These poor kids are just characters,” Constantine said, after jurors watched the 22minute report. Gumbel’s Real Sports program “is supposed to report real news, not fiction,” Constantine told the jury, as he went over segments of the report that he described as “concocted” or “flatout lies.” “These scenes were all staged and HBO is very good at that. They make good movies,” Constantine said. Mitre, owned by UKbased Pentland, has called the report a “hoax” and a “hatchet job,” aimed at tarnishing the reputation of a company at the forefront of global efforts to eradicate child labor. HBO stands by the report. A spokesman has repeatedly dismissed the libel case as “without merit” and said none of the report’s video footage was fabricated.