Charissa Thompson's admission of faked sideline reports

[LennG]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/fox-sports-anchor-admits-to-making-up-reports-as-a-sideline-reporter/ar-AA1k3kzt?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=e684c838dd63455d89b95ea06e9e81a3&ei=28

Seems even people outside of Washington can't tell us the truth either.

"current Fox Sports and Amazon Prime host, Charissa Thompson that she would, at times, make up content for her in-game reports."

[goNets]

I'm ok with that. Those sideline reports are pretty pointless anyway.

[madbadger]

Hate sideline reporters in general but there's never an excuse to make stuff up. Either say the coach refused to stop to answer questions or that she missed the chance to ask one. Should be a cause for being fired.

[Doc16LT56]

This may seem like a small, unimportant incident, but to me it speaks to a societal issue of lack of integrity. She cheats at her job and feels no shame in doing so, because people in so many of our industries cheat, cut corners, lie, and feel no sense of responsibility or accountability.

I realize I'm becoming the "get off my lawn" guy but to me this is why our government is full of people who lack integrity. It's endemic in our society.

If sideline reporters don't matter, then don't have sideline reporters. If you're going to have sideline reporters at the very least don't knowingly allow them to lie to the audience. Is that really too high a bar?

[DaveBrown74]

They shouldn't have these sideline reporters doing these mindless 15 second interviews in the middle of games in the first place. As Thompson herself says, the coaches all say the same things anyway. It's an absolutely needless role. Plus it's disruptive for the coaches. But whether the coach said "we need to do a better job of getting off the field on third down" or Thompson just made that up, it's the same outcome for the end user. If coaches said interesting things and she was making up the usual same coach-speak nonsense, then that would be a bigger problem, but that's not the case. Nobody needs or wants to hear coach speak in the middle of the game. These sideline reporters' jobs should really just be to get injury updates and stuff like that that's actually important intel. Getting some cliched coach-speak quote seems so mindlessly unnecessary. I'm not defending lying but I sort of see how that could happen given how silly the whole thing is to begin with.

[uconnjack8]

They shouldn't have these sideline reporters doing these mindless 15 second interviews in the middle of games in the first place. As Thompson herself says, the coaches all say the same things anyway. It's an absolutely needless role. Plus it's disruptive for the coaches. But whether the coach said "we need to do a better job of getting off the field on third down" or Thompson just made that up, it's the same outcome for the end user. If coaches said interesting things and she was making up the usual same coach-speak nonsense, then that would be a bigger problem, but that's not the case. Nobody needs or wants to hear coach speak in the middle of the game. These sideline reporters' jobs should really just be to get injury updates and stuff like that that's actually important intel. Getting some cliched coach-speak quote seems so mindlessly unnecessary. I'm not defending lying but I sort of see how that could happen given how silly the whole thing is to begin with.

I laughed when I read the article.  It struck me funny that she has been doing this and coaches were just happy that she said some drivel that they would say and it meant they didn't have to be bothered, so they never called it out.

A useless part of the broadcast and it's being handled with that in mind.

She probably should have kept that to herself though.

[AZGiantFan]

This may seem like a small, unimportant incident, but to me it speaks to a societal issue of lack of integrity. She cheats at her job and feels no shame in doing so, because people in so many of our industries cheat, cut corners, lie, and feel no sense of responsibility or accountability.

I realize I'm becoming the "get off my lawn" guy but to me this is why our government is full of people who lack integrity. It's endemic in our society.

If sideline reporters don't matter, then don't have sideline reporters. If you're going to have sideline reporters at the very least don't knowingly allow them to lie to the audience. Is that really too high a bar?

Integrity matters a lot more when there are consequences for not having it.  Those who will cheat on small things cannot be trusted to not cheat on large things.

[DaveBrown74]

I get that it was at best a nuisance and on numerous occasions probably impossible to get a comment from one of these stressed out coaches in the middle of a game. I don't think her inability to do that was a case of laziness necessarily. What she probably should have done was spoken to her producers and explained that sometimes it's simply not possible. But I'm sure she felt that if she did that it would fall on deaf ears and likely (if anything) get her fired.

I do think it's a valid point (which AZ made) that when someone exhibits a clear lack of integrity on smaller things, while they may be relatively inconsequential, if becomes much harder, if not impossible, to trust them on bigger things.

[Ed Vette]

The league and the networks have been finding ways to cultivate the female fan. This halftime interview is just one of the many ways this century.

If the Coach ducks out, it's not their fault but they should have a backup plan from the network. I don't like that she lied but she did confess. If it was me, I think I would have said that I wasn't able to connect with this HC but these are the challenges his team faces in the second half.

I'm sure most of the HCs hate that they have to comply.

[MightyGiants]

I am not sure which is worse, the fact that she made up quotes or that in the grand scheme of things it didn't matter

Thompson added that she got away with making things up in part because coaches give the same answers every time anyway, and putting believable words in their mouths wasn't difficult.

"No coach is going to get mad if I say, 'Hey, we need to stop hurting ourselves, we need to be better on third down, we need to stop turning the ball over and do a better job of getting off the field,'" Thompson said. "They're not going to correct me on that. So I'm like, it's fine, I'll just make up the report."

[Gmo11]

I totally understand why all of her colleagues are lashing out at this.  Those people are actually doing the job and trying to get real information no matter how pointless it might be.  But here comes Charissa who just makes stuff up and pretends its real?  That's ridiculous.  The truth is you could do away with those reports all together and not a soul would care, the coaches would likely to a man prefer it that way, but if they're going to keep doing them don't lie.  Just do what the reporter did when Daboll blew her off because Tyrod Taylor had just done the dumbest thing imaginable.  "Brian Daboll apologized saying he's in no frame of mind to discuss what just happened". Easy.  Done.  And most importantly honest.

[MightyGiants]

https://x.com/saltersl/status/1725328209602924871?s=20

[ozzie]

Fire-able offense in my opinion. I hope she is no longer on the Thursday Night Broadcasts.

[Philosophers]

Why is the truth so hard to implement?  If a sideline reporter could not speak to the coach, why not just say, "coach was unavailable?"

[LennG]

Why is the truth so hard to implement?  If a sideline reporter could not speak to the coach, why not just say, "coach was unavailable?"

Basically Phik, that is her one job to get info. If she can't do that, then make it up.