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Sky News further exposed as original creator of video footage comes forward

Sky News has been caught in a storm over it’s deleting and then re-editing of a report on the Maccabi Tel Aviv fan’s rioting in Amsterdam. However, the original filmmaker who captured some of the footage it used has now come forward – and claims that it, and other media outlets, misrepresented it to shore up the narrative that the attacks were antisemitic.

Maccabi Tel Aviv/Sky News

On 8 November, media outlets and politicians decried “antisemitic attacks” on Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans, with some referring to the incident as a “pogrom”, and others comparing it to the events of pre-war Nazi Germany. These same outlets and politicians received criticism for leaving out significant context on what happened in the run up to the later violence – but at the time, this didn’t include Sky News:

While there is evidence of violence being directed towards the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, the narrative that this was a Nazi-style pogrom just doesn’t hold up, as we reported ourselves. Another outlet which game some semblance of balance was Sky News, but the initial report they produced was later deleted:

Sky News: a tale of two videos

Marc Owen Jones is an associate professor and author of Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East. In a summary of an article he wrote for Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo, he tweeted:

The term ‘anti-Arab slogans’ has itself become controversial, with Reuters using the term in contrast to ‘anti-Israeli slurs’:

Jones continued:

In his Zeteo article, Jones wrote:

So marginalized were stories attempting to explain violence from Maccabi Tel Aviv fans that one Amsterdam resident took to social media to call out the media bias. She described hiding in fear as Israeli supporters attacked her home for displaying a Palestinian flag, stating in Dutch, “I hardly see anything in the media about my experience – that letting loose agitated football hooligans with war traumas, from a country that commits genocide and engages in extreme dehumanization, in the city *regardless of whether there are counter-protests* is not a good idea.”

Sky News’s reason for re-editing the video to remove the above context? Apparently it didn’t meet their “standards for balance and impartiality”:

Jones captured both videos for those who want to see:

Novara Media’s Rivkah Brown, meanwhile, highlighted that Sky News editor Sandy Rashty has been retweeting messages which align with the ‘Nazi pogrom’ version of reality:

It gets worse somehow

A photographer with the Twitter handle iAnnet captured footage of the violence in Amsterdam:

 

Annet noticed that many outlets were ignoring and even reversing the context she gave them, with a picture of a “Maccabi mob” chasing pedestrians presented as antisemitic violence:

Annet has been contacting outlets, questioning the use of her footage, and demanding retractions and apologies. She’s already had some success:

At the time of writing, she has yet to report receiving a satisfactory response from Sky News:

Manufacturing consent

The West is responsible for funding and tolerating Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. As such, it suits the establishment to present a narrative that all Jewish people support Israel and that any attack against Israel or its people is an attack on Jewish people everywhere.

Western media’s handling of this latest story is a textbook example of how they will ignore, edit, and delete context that doesn’t support their preferred narrative. What’s not so textbook is we now get to see these edits being made in front of our very eyes – like those of Sky News.

Featured image via Sky News

By The Canary