HBO's Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel Faked Footage?

A firm that was targeted by Bryant Gumbel's show on HBO as part of an expose on exploited child workers is suing both and alleging that the show faked footage.

HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" blasted Mitre Sports International, one of the world's largest soccer-ball manufacturers, in a Sept. 16 exposé, claiming the company subjugates children in India by forcing them to work long hours stitching soccer balls for little money in squalid conditions.

But Mitre obtained video interviews with the parents of the children in the northern India town of Jalandhar that prove the kids were not factory employees and that they had been offered money or fame to lie on camera, the sporting-goods company claims.

Emmy Award-winning broadcaster Bernard Goldberg interviewed Manjit Kaur, 12, a purported orphan who claimed to earn 5 cents an hour making balls until "her back aches and her eyes hurt," according to the complaint.

But in a video that's been entered into the court record as evidence, the little girl's father says his daughter was offered 100 rupees - the equivalent of $2 - in exchange for her cooperation.

It wouldn't be the first time that a show such as this faked footage. Here, the manufacturer also claims that Wal Mart and Modells have pulled the company's soccer balls from shelves based on the story.