I know this approach is a little nontraditional, however I believe it is a perfect example. Scapegoating happens in nearly ever team sport and it influences the public opinion for example ESPN. Lets look at football for example how many times has the receiver blamed the quarterback for dropping a pass saying it was bad throw, he over threw it and then on the other hand how many times has the quarterback blamed a bad throw on the receiver? Saying the pass was right to him, and he missed it!
Both of those are example of scapegoating, its about throwing the blame somewhere else and not looking at the facts. On a daily ESPN reports forms of opinion and facts, but people watch for the opinion. Sometimes some of those opinions are influenced by the scapegoating, because they weren’t there to see it first hand and sometimes it so close you can’t clearly see who fault it was. So the reports listen to the players accounts of what happens and no player wants the loss of the team on their record so they try and find a scapegoat and persuade all the fans, reporters and coaches that it wasn’t their fault.
However what I notices is that scapegoating just goes from one person to the next, no one wants to own up if it isn’t something they did and some people don’t want to own up if it is something that they did do.