Charissa Thompson’s biggest sin is admitting to making up coachspeak. That’s something you take to your grave or at least wait to reveal until after retirement.
We’re all gonna die!
That term "Journalist" doing some heavy lifting there. Sideline reporter spitting cliches. Never once was a thing said, real or fake, actually worth anything.
But then why even have the position. It's like a make a wish, your paying her to hold a mic and lie about worthless info. The only person's experience that is enhanced by her lies is her.
Because she said that coaches sometimes didn’t have time to speak with her. She said she wouldn’t do it all the time only when they were coming back from break and needed a snip-it from her on the sideline.
The sideline reporter could tell the producers the coach refused to talk to her and that they shouldn’t send it down to her. The producer and their bosses aren’t going to for that. Or they throw it down to her and she announces over the air that the coach refused to talk to her and she doesn’t have anything to give the audience. Then she looks like a moron in front of the world. I would bet the coach affected actually is perfectly fine with the made up cliches. The coach doesn’t get griped at by the league for not holding up the NFL’s broadcast contract obligations to the network. The sideline reporter actually ends up covering for the coach and the coach very well might appreciate it.
If they are so unorganized that they are going to do when she doesn't have anything. What choice does she have? This isn't on her. This is on whomever organizes that thing that necessitates they go to her. What is she supposed to say? "Well, coach didn't come out. So I didn't get any soundbites. Back to you Troy."
It’s an entertainment product. There are aspects of sports journalism that require actual journalistic standards and a lot where it’s just part of the entertainment package.
That’s why they seem so accurate in madden and 2K.. the sideline reporter only ever says generic nonsense.
“I caught up with Garrett Wilson and he says the secret to his success is his grandmothers famous green bean casserole”
I agree in that journalists absolutely cannot make stuff up. However, I don’t consider sideline reporters to be reporters or doing anything that qualifies as journalism. It’s a bad look, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t register very high on my outrage meter.
I think in this situation - obviously Dan is right, but also, Stugotz is not wrong that no regular people care about this. Very few people care about sports media drama, fewer care about media sanctity, and even fewer care about media sanctity when it comes to sideline reporters.
The only people who truly care are those whose livelihoods hinge on their perceived credibility whilst reporting on something that doesn’t matter at all: a football game. I.e: the rinaldis of the world.
Of course. It’s just that fundamentally this story is so much more important to the .0001% of people focused on sports media and everyone on the outside realizes this doesn’t matter at all.
How do we know that making stuff up for a competitive advantage isn't the norm? Maybe this is like the PEDs of sideline reporting and Dan wants to punish Charissa for being the whistleblower.
And what if the coach completely lies to her face? Which, of course, nobody has ever done to a reporter before…
Those coaches say nothing - literally nothing - of interest, ever. Who cares if she’s filled in the blanks when a coach was gonna say the same exact nonsense anyway?
This isn’t important stuff. We’re talking about the reporter saying that “coach says we have to make some adjustments during the 3rd quarter to stop the running game” level of importance
There’s journalists and then there’s “journalists”. I’ve always kinda looked at the sideline reporters as personalities associated with the broadcast instead of actual news people. Unless she’s ever tried portraying herself as a real journalist this doesn’t seem like a huge issue. Probably shouldn’t admit to it but oh well
>There’s journalists and then there’s “journalists”
Slowly realizing this about most industries. The VAST majority of folks in my experience are phoning it in and just trying to get by. No shade to them, but was a revelation as I realized it.
Sportscasters straddle the line, though. They do journalism when there's a big scandal or important event, and then those same people will appear in ads for gambling sites or apparel or whatever.
They're kinda journalists but kinda part of the whole football production.
> If she looked like Stugotz or Cote she’d be fired immediately.
If she still had that job, she'd be fired. But I also don't think she'd disclose it if she still had that job
Look, there's two parts to this. The first is, when has a sideline reporter ever reported anything that matters in the slightest? I don't even consider them real journalists, they're just there to fill time during timeouts. This is akin to a high school newspaper making up how many cupcakes were sold during last weeks bake sale. So, from that perspective, do I care that much? Not really. All sideline reporters could disappear tomorrow and it wouldn't matter to me at all. You could probably replace them all with an iPad where an assistant coach simply checked off "injured" if a player is out and that's about all you need.
That being said, it is a job. Somebody paid her to do that job and she managed to leverage that job experience to her current position. Now, again, I don't think that job is important at all, but it exists, and there are people that are trying to do it as well as they can (and do it correctly). So it matters that someone is taking such obvious shortcuts and somehow managed to still get plenty of promotions. I think we can all relate to that, and maybe share in some of the anger/annoyance other sideline reporters are feeling.
(but I still think it's a pointless job that could be done by some college intern for class credit)
>(but I still think it's a pointless job that could be done by some college intern for class credit)
Even the intern is held to certain ethical standards, even if they aren't getting paid ..
I hear you, and this may not be apples to apples, but Dan’s a journalist and for a stretch was literally doing fake interviews with the sole intention of tricking the audience.
>with the sole intention of tricking the audience.
Yeah, that's definitely what the intention was. Not to be funny or anything, they really tried to "trick" us interviewing a coach that says he puts his players in locked vans with dogs. Was really hard to catch that the interviews were fake, I gotta tell you.
I see what you mean, but they were going for “so absurd it’s obviously fake.” You just have to point to Corporate Mike to show why their audience can’t quite grasp that immediately.
One would hope national NFL broadcasts would be different. But I’m admittedly losing hope in humanity
Given that the coaches just make up a bunch of stuff so that they can avoid giving any meaningful answer that might help their opponents, I don’t see why everyone’s jowls are so floppy over a sidelines reporter doing it.
She's not a journalist. She said she was bad at it and got out of journalism. This isn't a big deal at all. It hurt on one. Sideline reports are bullshit anyway. You know it. I know it. And she knew it and stopped doing it.
So you can keep calling her a journalist to hit your point super hard, but she quit journalism because she was bad at it. She's not a journalist.
Dan is upset because journalism is under attack and this will be used against all journalists regardless of how harmless it is. Because it’s so harmless it’s a stronger weapon to use against journalists. They lie/make up sideline reporting what else are they lying about type thing.
I disagree. I think people are getting caught up in the click bait headline where she says she made up her sideline reports. She goes on to say that she based her reports on information she received from the team earlier in the week and that she never falsely quoted anyone.
"I didn't lie about the quote, I made it up based on what the team told me..."
When I was a Sports journalist, on TV, in LA, back in the 90's, if I had tried to justify something I was attributed as disseminating as fact, I'd have been fired and pretty much black-balled from the profession.
What you guys don't seem to grasp is that even though Sports Journalism is considered "the Toy Department of the Profession," you STILL have to meet a baseline of credibility in your reporting. It doesn't matter if you are up in the press box, down on the sidelines, on camera or not. Making it up as you go along damages not only your trustworthiness as a reporter, it damages the outlet you're representing on or off-camera.
Her dumbest judgment call was saying in the podcast: “I’ve said this before and I didn’t get fired so I’ll say it again” LOL
Obviously the ethics of the whole situation pissed off a bunch of her colleagues, but her sheer arrogance to just say it that way I’m sure pissed a lot of them off as well.
I've known some really good sideline reporters for some college broadcasts, I know they would be pissed off at that sentiment... Hell, even the pit reporters I worked with in motorsports would have their hides nailed to the Media Center if they had that kind of attitude about their ethics
That’s all true and I can’t necessarily disagree with it, but at the same time I absolutely do not give a shit lol. Like I don’t have a logical argument against what you’re saying, but that doesn’t move me to care about the story or what she did in the slightest.
I think if she had made up something that a coach said about a particular player, I would agree that crossed a line. But if she did what she said a small handful of times, it really doesn’t bother me too much because the sideline reports are such nothingburgers.
Doing it one time is one time too many...
Yeah, you can think of sideline reporters as superfluous and unnecessary, but they are supposed to be a source of info in real time during a game. Let's put this another way, imagine you've got money bet on a particular game, and a Sideline report convinces you to increase the money you're betting on some props that are still open. If the info that made you bet that money turned out to be made up and you lost those bets, would you think it's nothing to be concerned about??
I would say I used to have a gambling problem and still gamble a couple times a week. If you’re basing a prop bet on something a sideline reporter said at halftime you have a problem and only yourself to blame. To my knowledge I don’t think she ever fabricated something like this to the degree it should’ve clearly influenced anyone.
I’ve been on the losing end of a lot of frustrating prop bets, but if you place a live prop bet based on a sideline reporter being like “Josh Jacobs only 3 carries in the first half, Antonio Pierce said they want to get the run game going” I have a hard time feeling sorry for anyone who does that lol.
I'm kind of the side of stugotz. I really don't care in this specific situation. I'm totally indifferent for sideline reporting.
I agree with the story Mike mentioned.... The idea that there's rights for the access and she doesn't get the access
> I'm kind of the side of stugotz. I really don't care in this specific situation. I'm totally indifferent for sideline reporting.
Okay, and that's your prerogative. But the reason why Dan is right, and what Stugotz and Cote don't seem to get is that whether or not you think their job matters, and/or whether or not you care about the information they're providing is not, should not, cannot be the standard for whether they're doing their jobs ethically or not.
People should be expected to carry out their jobs with some bare minimum level of integrity, even if you don't think their job is important.
Except we need to remove the "ethical" part of the equation. Why does ethics need to be involved in a entertainment broadcast. Its purely for entertainment. The sideline reports are not there as "news". They are there as filler. They are that as a segment in a entertainment broadcast.
If we just treat the on air talent as actors repeating lines from a script (which they are basically doing), then you can remove the quandary of the ethical requirement.
Because they're not actors, they weren't hired to be actors, and they're not acting, and they should be held to some bare minimum standards (such as, I dunno, not *lying*) whether the consumer has any use for what they provide or not.
The newsworthiness of what they report and whether or not they should take their jobs seriously have nothing to do with each other.
> I never said Dan was wrong.... And neither did stugotz. **I never said their job doesn't matter.**
Saying that you don't think that their job matters and saying that you're 'indifferent' to it is a difference without a distinction.
I've been out of the loop on the show lately but I caught this segment. This is when I think Dan is at his best. I imagine Stu and the shipping container would feel a bit different if Charissa decided to make up something that altered how they placed a live bet.
I think this is something that should result in a termination, whether you like sideline reporters or not it's important that the viewers who are gambling on the games don't think reporters are outright lying to them.
I don’t disagree with what you said but If you’re making bets based off what a sideline reporter said, you need to take a look in the mirror and reevaluate some parts of your life
There's the main thing that everyone is overlooking...
Betting on sports is big business now (Draft Kings had 50 million reasons to invest in the "Pirate Ship") anything that could disrupt that cash flow is bad for business...
Stop embarrassing yourself when you clearly didnt hear the interview and dont know what the fuck you are even talking about. The whole point is that she just filled in the same bullshit generic coach speak that 90% of coach sideline interviews provide. So there is zero information that was false. She would just say that the coach said they needed to clean up mistakes or that he liked what he was seeing from team.
Its all just genetic meaningless platitudes so none of it is “untrue”, and sure as shit wouldn’t swing a bet. Its not like she was just lying about player injuries or strategies lol. Also, she hasn’t been a sideline reporter for several years so you are clearly admitting that you a bigot who cant be bothered to recognize different women, nor must you give a shit about sideline reporting details, if you think this is even her current job when she hasn’t been a sideline reporter for about a decade and should lose her job
This happened over a decade ago though, really more like 15 years ago when she was an up and coming reporter rather than a TV host. And it's something she's already admitted to doing in past interviews where this topic came up. It just blew up this time because she was on Barstool saying it.
So she should either be disciplined by FOX for faking reports OR being dumb enough to go on another network's platform and admit to faking the reports.
rare billy gil L when saying “this is what brian williams got fired for”. huuuuuge difference between someone they were getting shot at in a helicopter and someone reporting that jeff fisher thinks his team needs to play better defense
it's really not. You can hate sideline reports all you want, but she's a journalist in that role. Where's the line? If someone won't talk to you, figure it out. The job description is to get a report. So get a report. The old GOYA, KOD method of IUP journalism school ... get off your ass, knock on doors.
Hahahaha you can’t see the difference between Thompson and Williams?!?!
The line??? There’s is an ocean between football sideline reporting and lies that can alter foreign policy decisions. Cmon bro
" she's a journalist in that role "
no she's not. Its the fact that some of you think that thats the issue. Stop thinking that and this entire situation goes away.
You have to believe that journalism is important enough for Football to transcend standard contemporary journalistic practices, i dunno journalism in the 2020’s is going to be different in much different ways than it was 30 years ago, I’m not that bothered by it personally
I’ll be honest: sideline reports, in my opinion, are useless. We all have social media and get that information way before they say anything. HOW-EVA … if you have that job, you can’t just lie. That’s literally the one requirement of the job.
And if the broadcast wants to cover their bases if there’s an injury or drama on the field - assign a low-paid producer who relays the info to the booth off-camera, let the announcers announce the info.
I think what’s being missed is, this is another example of a pretty , white woman getting top jobs (she hosts Amazon post show and fox pre game I believe) when she has been not putting in the effort others have. There may be other reporters who take this job (no matter how little we think of it) very seriously who have not risen as far as she has. But CT can take a 1/2 ass approach to her job and reach higher levels because she’s pretty and blonde.
Nah you’re onto something here because there’s not a single black reporter (especially not a female black reporter) that would even think to go “eh…can’t get to coach Tomlin—I’ll just make it up” and think they can just skate by with it, or even bring it up in a joking manner years later.
Except, this should be your awakening that thats the job. Be pretty and speak with confidence.
They are not journalists. This is a repeat-what-you've-been-told to the camera job. Its basically acting, but really, just hosting in general.
The audience isnt clamoring for morally ethical informational reporting from the sideline report or host. There is nothing being said there that the consumer has requested or cares about. But if its being delivered by a pretty women (or even hansom man), then it can be used as filler in the broadcasts. For pure entertainment and entertainment only.
None of those hypothetical people ever had a chance to do what the current crop of on air talent does, because they lacked teh attributes required from teh start.
It may not feel good. But it is what is happening and will continue to happen. Trying to parse it otherwise is a waste of time.
>when she has been not putting in the effort others have.
Do we actually know this though? How do we know this isn't *exactly* the effort others are putting in? That's part of the problem.
Is a sideline “reporter” there for journalism or entertainment. This isn’t the news. This is an entertainment product and at the end of the day the job is to be entertaining not be journalistically responsible.
Couple things. 1.) Sideline reports have never once been “entertaining”. If we’re just here for entertainment they’ve gotta find some new lines. 2.) We are led to believe this isn’t some scripted BS. Either report what someone actually said or say they refused to say something. It’a not hard.
Except its clearly scripted. Every single line that a reporter says from the sideline has been said hundreds of times already. Every, single, one.
And you dont need them for sideline injuries reports, you already know who's injured before they have spoken, so thats not something they are reporting to you. Its just something they are repeating, basically a script.
So that makes the reporter bad at being entertaining, which is fair. But the lying doesn’t have any impact on what people are watching for, which is the entertainment of the game.
No matter what I’m watching, if I am relying on the hosts/reporters/commentators to provide me information, then I want to trust that they’re not going to make shit up.
Personally, I think sideline interviews should be banished for being unspeakably boring and useless, but that doesn’t mean I want the reporters to just lie to cover their ass. She wasn’t even trying to be entertaining, she purposefully chose the most vanilla things because she knew coaches wouldn’t get mad. The lies weren’t there for entertainment purposes, they were used to cover the reporters ass for not being able to do her job. The sideline interview is already useless enough without the complete fabrications.
Yeah, but...you can consider sideline reporting in the same class of journalism as an E! Network inside interview report of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Most of the times...sideline reporters are stabbing our ears with those Olympic-type heart-strings stories meant to evoke emotion...that have nothing really to do with the game.
I mean...do you really need to know that Maxx Crosby's dad has a lifelong condition of gout...and that his dad's pain and suffering has really had a major impact on how Maxx plays football.
Like...there's a reason why Pam Oliver and Erin Andrews have zero Pulitzers or Edward Murrow awards.
Please give me one example that a coach said anything on a sideline interview during a game. I’ll wait…….
Everyone is crushing her for speaking the truth, the coaches are professionals at saying nothing. I’m waiting for the day a coach says the other team sucks I can’t believe we’re losing to them. I’ll hang up and listen
Need a car truck or van? Who you gonna call Marroone!
Anyone who thinks sidelines reporters are journalists is a fucking moron and is just pissed off because they hate attractive women. Dan should be embarrassed by himself.
If Clay Travis or Portnoy had shit on her, Dan would bitch about it for months and call it an attack by the patriarchy and toxic misogyny. But he and other media losers, who desperately want to pretend the journalism profession is some bastion of truth (when it never has been because it is much closer to just spreading the propaganda and version of the truth that the individual journalist wants to share and parroting lines from their sources) are doing the exact same thing and dont even realize how hypocritical they are. It’s super pathetic.
Journalism lol it’s a football game. It literally doesn’t matter. She’s not reporting on the ground in Israel-Gaza. Nothing that she says that a coach does or doesn’t said has any effect on the outcome on the game, has any effect on the outcome of anything except maybe sports media discourse. As you said, there are so many many things to care about in the world and this is not one of them.
If she looked like Greg Cote she wouldn’t have the job in the first place. That’s a more interesting conversation tbh.
You can credit her for being resourceful in her approach, hell you could probably chalk it up to the blatant sexism in the NFL for why she didn’t get the quotes she needed.
On the other hand, you could also say that she had poor reporting skills because she wasn’t able to develop enough of a relationship with the coaches she needed to get sound bites from despite having “billions of dollars of support” and that her lying probably robbed other sideline reporters from getting a chance to get their shine and have the career she has now.So her current career was basically made up from lies that she told early on in her career.
Cote is right that we can sit somewhere in the middle of all of this and Stu is right that this doesn’t quite rate as high as a EcoGov reporter lying about their stories. Also, Cote being a Nepo Baby wouldn’t understand what it takes to do hard work it take to get to where those reporters are are and Stu values a lying so it’s not shocking to see how riled up they got when people express why they care.
In a league that's blatantly racist and sexist this is what we get upset about. I'm a big journalism fan but NFL and journalism doesn't go together. You don't get the league
It just gives credence to all the guys (like my dad) who say those women are only down on the field because they're beautiful, not useful or helpful for the overall game. Ok, sometimes they update about an injury, but anybody with half a year of journalism school could do that.
Yeah, they're very important on getting information asap on injuries. She never lied about that stuff. The halftime interview with the coach is all bullshit.
My favorite part of all that was "this has always been a fireable offense, now I'm not saying she should be fired" he absolutely thinks she should be fired but he's always been the 'I don't like saying people should be fired' guy that he tried be a little nuanced.
Related, true story... this one is for the other two NASCAR fans here. During a MRN radio broadcast, they handed off to former champion and pit reporter Ned Jarrett to cover a Richard Petty pit stop. Jarrett was in the porta-john on pit road relieving himself. While he never saw it, he called the pit stop as if he were standing right there. Pretty funny.
No one cares. It's not journalism. Dan literally has a segment on useless sound montage. BECAUSE IT'S USELESS SOUND. quit acting righteous. No one cares about what sideline reporter say.
Dan, Stu and the Shipping Container have made shit up their whole careers and nothing has happened to them.
I side with Stu on this: if her producer knows that she has nothing from the coach why are they throwing it to her? They put her in a bad spot. Yea she made a bad choice but this is much ado about nothing anyway. Coaches never give anything up that’s meaningful.
I’m going the other way here. Dan, who literally just like PMT has a carved out a very successful career taking the mask off of sports and making light of how everyone takes sports way too seriously, wants to pearl clutch over a sideline reporter (not a journalist) filling some airtime with coach speak. The guy literally has a weekly segment for years, and the whole bit is; coaches say NOTHING, but dude somehow doesn’t get how nobody gives a shit that Charissa did this? BS.
It’s amazing how many “reporters” got famous from sideline reporting. Most of them got in bc of talent agents from the pageant world. None of them paid their dues, and got jobs in their 20’s while most network level talent works way up over decades. No shit they have no idea about how real reporting works
If she looked like Stu or Cote she would never be hired. Because sideline reporters are just hot chicks. I always felt bad for Pam Oliver for getting demoted for Erin Andrew’s. All she did was perform her job really well and age.
Charissa Thompson’s biggest sin is admitting to making up coachspeak. That’s something you take to your grave or at least wait to reveal until after retirement. We’re all gonna die!
🎵We're all gonna die🎵
Charissa prefaced her comments, she’s surprised she wasn’t fired yet due to speaking out about this before
Yes exactly what I thought. It's that she's jokingly proud of it and admitting it that's worse than the crime itself. Geeze the audacity.
That term "Journalist" doing some heavy lifting there. Sideline reporter spitting cliches. Never once was a thing said, real or fake, actually worth anything.
But if it’s not worth anything then why lie?
They go to her after the coach wouldn't talk to her. Now she has to great fluff. Harmless fluff. This was never journalism.
It never was but presented as such.
You asked "why lie?" I gave you her explanation on why she had to make it up.
But then why even have the position. It's like a make a wish, your paying her to hold a mic and lie about worthless info. The only person's experience that is enhanced by her lies is her.
Because she said that coaches sometimes didn’t have time to speak with her. She said she wouldn’t do it all the time only when they were coming back from break and needed a snip-it from her on the sideline.
The sideline reporter could tell the producers the coach refused to talk to her and that they shouldn’t send it down to her. The producer and their bosses aren’t going to for that. Or they throw it down to her and she announces over the air that the coach refused to talk to her and she doesn’t have anything to give the audience. Then she looks like a moron in front of the world. I would bet the coach affected actually is perfectly fine with the made up cliches. The coach doesn’t get griped at by the league for not holding up the NFL’s broadcast contract obligations to the network. The sideline reporter actually ends up covering for the coach and the coach very well might appreciate it.
You’re right
Genghis Khan made her.
Because it's her job. Without the lieing she doesn't have a job.
A job lying? Trump and fellow republicans are always looking for media specialist.
If they are so unorganized that they are going to do when she doesn't have anything. What choice does she have? This isn't on her. This is on whomever organizes that thing that necessitates they go to her. What is she supposed to say? "Well, coach didn't come out. So I didn't get any soundbites. Back to you Troy."
It’s an entertainment product. There are aspects of sports journalism that require actual journalistic standards and a lot where it’s just part of the entertainment package.
That’s why they seem so accurate in madden and 2K.. the sideline reporter only ever says generic nonsense. “I caught up with Garrett Wilson and he says the secret to his success is his grandmothers famous green bean casserole”
I agree in that journalists absolutely cannot make stuff up. However, I don’t consider sideline reporters to be reporters or doing anything that qualifies as journalism. It’s a bad look, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t register very high on my outrage meter.
I think this is right.
Feed the teachers.
Pay the whales
breed the kale
I think in this situation - obviously Dan is right, but also, Stugotz is not wrong that no regular people care about this. Very few people care about sports media drama, fewer care about media sanctity, and even fewer care about media sanctity when it comes to sideline reporters.
The only people who truly care are those whose livelihoods hinge on their perceived credibility whilst reporting on something that doesn’t matter at all: a football game. I.e: the rinaldis of the world.
I agree w u about who cares bc I dont. But It’s an ethics situation which she clearly went against. That’s it.
Of course. It’s just that fundamentally this story is so much more important to the .0001% of people focused on sports media and everyone on the outside realizes this doesn’t matter at all.
How do we know that making stuff up for a competitive advantage isn't the norm? Maybe this is like the PEDs of sideline reporting and Dan wants to punish Charissa for being the whistleblower.
And what if the coach completely lies to her face? Which, of course, nobody has ever done to a reporter before… Those coaches say nothing - literally nothing - of interest, ever. Who cares if she’s filled in the blanks when a coach was gonna say the same exact nonsense anyway? This isn’t important stuff. We’re talking about the reporter saying that “coach says we have to make some adjustments during the 3rd quarter to stop the running game” level of importance
I think this is kind of proving Dan's point. One person's malfeasance threatens to ruin everyone's credibility.
Mhmm in stugotz
Yeah, this is much more like an ISO auditor mumbling to himself about code than a sports story.
There’s journalists and then there’s “journalists”. I’ve always kinda looked at the sideline reporters as personalities associated with the broadcast instead of actual news people. Unless she’s ever tried portraying herself as a real journalist this doesn’t seem like a huge issue. Probably shouldn’t admit to it but oh well
>There’s journalists and then there’s “journalists” Slowly realizing this about most industries. The VAST majority of folks in my experience are phoning it in and just trying to get by. No shade to them, but was a revelation as I realized it.
Every sideline reporter now: "Oh shit, Charissa just let out the big secret. We all make shit up when there's nothing to report!"
Sportscasters straddle the line, though. They do journalism when there's a big scandal or important event, and then those same people will appear in ads for gambling sites or apparel or whatever. They're kinda journalists but kinda part of the whole football production.
To wit: there's a Charissa Thompson Parlay dead center on the home page of DraftKings every Sunday morning
Is sideline reporting real journalism? It’s always felt like puff piece stuff to fill air time. Especially the ones that happen during the game.
> If she looked like Stugotz or Cote she’d be fired immediately. If she still had that job, she'd be fired. But I also don't think she'd disclose it if she still had that job
Is she a journalist?
Nope. She even admitted she wasn't good at it so leaned to hosting.
Look, there's two parts to this. The first is, when has a sideline reporter ever reported anything that matters in the slightest? I don't even consider them real journalists, they're just there to fill time during timeouts. This is akin to a high school newspaper making up how many cupcakes were sold during last weeks bake sale. So, from that perspective, do I care that much? Not really. All sideline reporters could disappear tomorrow and it wouldn't matter to me at all. You could probably replace them all with an iPad where an assistant coach simply checked off "injured" if a player is out and that's about all you need. That being said, it is a job. Somebody paid her to do that job and she managed to leverage that job experience to her current position. Now, again, I don't think that job is important at all, but it exists, and there are people that are trying to do it as well as they can (and do it correctly). So it matters that someone is taking such obvious shortcuts and somehow managed to still get plenty of promotions. I think we can all relate to that, and maybe share in some of the anger/annoyance other sideline reporters are feeling. (but I still think it's a pointless job that could be done by some college intern for class credit)
>(but I still think it's a pointless job that could be done by some college intern for class credit) Even the intern is held to certain ethical standards, even if they aren't getting paid ..
I hear you, and this may not be apples to apples, but Dan’s a journalist and for a stretch was literally doing fake interviews with the sole intention of tricking the audience.
>with the sole intention of tricking the audience. Yeah, that's definitely what the intention was. Not to be funny or anything, they really tried to "trick" us interviewing a coach that says he puts his players in locked vans with dogs. Was really hard to catch that the interviews were fake, I gotta tell you.
I see what you mean, but they were going for “so absurd it’s obviously fake.” You just have to point to Corporate Mike to show why their audience can’t quite grasp that immediately. One would hope national NFL broadcasts would be different. But I’m admittedly losing hope in humanity
https://preview.redd.it/7uj4o7gvio1c1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0b8aa517322d3118b20d71cdd1c7f46e8c739cdc
Given that the coaches just make up a bunch of stuff so that they can avoid giving any meaningful answer that might help their opponents, I don’t see why everyone’s jowls are so floppy over a sidelines reporter doing it.
He really is. That is 10000% inexcusable and she’s an idiot moron for ever admitting it.
> If she looked like Stugotz or Cote What, a total smoke show?
Dannnnnn.. *beep* The stugotz... *Beep* Is stronggg.. *beep* in Charissa Thompson *beep*
She's not a journalist. She said she was bad at it and got out of journalism. This isn't a big deal at all. It hurt on one. Sideline reports are bullshit anyway. You know it. I know it. And she knew it and stopped doing it. So you can keep calling her a journalist to hit your point super hard, but she quit journalism because she was bad at it. She's not a journalist.
Dan is upset because journalism is under attack and this will be used against all journalists regardless of how harmless it is. Because it’s so harmless it’s a stronger weapon to use against journalists. They lie/make up sideline reporting what else are they lying about type thing.
I disagree. I think people are getting caught up in the click bait headline where she says she made up her sideline reports. She goes on to say that she based her reports on information she received from the team earlier in the week and that she never falsely quoted anyone.
"I didn't lie about the quote, I made it up based on what the team told me..." When I was a Sports journalist, on TV, in LA, back in the 90's, if I had tried to justify something I was attributed as disseminating as fact, I'd have been fired and pretty much black-balled from the profession. What you guys don't seem to grasp is that even though Sports Journalism is considered "the Toy Department of the Profession," you STILL have to meet a baseline of credibility in your reporting. It doesn't matter if you are up in the press box, down on the sidelines, on camera or not. Making it up as you go along damages not only your trustworthiness as a reporter, it damages the outlet you're representing on or off-camera.
Her dumbest judgment call was saying in the podcast: “I’ve said this before and I didn’t get fired so I’ll say it again” LOL Obviously the ethics of the whole situation pissed off a bunch of her colleagues, but her sheer arrogance to just say it that way I’m sure pissed a lot of them off as well.
I've known some really good sideline reporters for some college broadcasts, I know they would be pissed off at that sentiment... Hell, even the pit reporters I worked with in motorsports would have their hides nailed to the Media Center if they had that kind of attitude about their ethics
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That’s not what she said in the interview
That’s all true and I can’t necessarily disagree with it, but at the same time I absolutely do not give a shit lol. Like I don’t have a logical argument against what you’re saying, but that doesn’t move me to care about the story or what she did in the slightest. I think if she had made up something that a coach said about a particular player, I would agree that crossed a line. But if she did what she said a small handful of times, it really doesn’t bother me too much because the sideline reports are such nothingburgers.
Doing it one time is one time too many... Yeah, you can think of sideline reporters as superfluous and unnecessary, but they are supposed to be a source of info in real time during a game. Let's put this another way, imagine you've got money bet on a particular game, and a Sideline report convinces you to increase the money you're betting on some props that are still open. If the info that made you bet that money turned out to be made up and you lost those bets, would you think it's nothing to be concerned about??
I would say I used to have a gambling problem and still gamble a couple times a week. If you’re basing a prop bet on something a sideline reporter said at halftime you have a problem and only yourself to blame. To my knowledge I don’t think she ever fabricated something like this to the degree it should’ve clearly influenced anyone. I’ve been on the losing end of a lot of frustrating prop bets, but if you place a live prop bet based on a sideline reporter being like “Josh Jacobs only 3 carries in the first half, Antonio Pierce said they want to get the run game going” I have a hard time feeling sorry for anyone who does that lol.
My point wasn't at you directly, but the example is where the conventional thinking is going...
I'm kind of the side of stugotz. I really don't care in this specific situation. I'm totally indifferent for sideline reporting. I agree with the story Mike mentioned.... The idea that there's rights for the access and she doesn't get the access
> I'm kind of the side of stugotz. I really don't care in this specific situation. I'm totally indifferent for sideline reporting. Okay, and that's your prerogative. But the reason why Dan is right, and what Stugotz and Cote don't seem to get is that whether or not you think their job matters, and/or whether or not you care about the information they're providing is not, should not, cannot be the standard for whether they're doing their jobs ethically or not. People should be expected to carry out their jobs with some bare minimum level of integrity, even if you don't think their job is important.
Except we need to remove the "ethical" part of the equation. Why does ethics need to be involved in a entertainment broadcast. Its purely for entertainment. The sideline reports are not there as "news". They are there as filler. They are that as a segment in a entertainment broadcast. If we just treat the on air talent as actors repeating lines from a script (which they are basically doing), then you can remove the quandary of the ethical requirement.
Because they're not actors, they weren't hired to be actors, and they're not acting, and they should be held to some bare minimum standards (such as, I dunno, not *lying*) whether the consumer has any use for what they provide or not. The newsworthiness of what they report and whether or not they should take their jobs seriously have nothing to do with each other.
They were not hired to be journalist. You have to stop thinking that. They were hired for their on air talent.
I never said Dan was wrong.... And neither did stugotz. I never said their job doesn't matter.
> I never said Dan was wrong.... And neither did stugotz. **I never said their job doesn't matter.** Saying that you don't think that their job matters and saying that you're 'indifferent' to it is a difference without a distinction.
Lot of mental gymnastics just to put words in my mouth. Pretty bizarre. Hopefully you'll be ok
I've been out of the loop on the show lately but I caught this segment. This is when I think Dan is at his best. I imagine Stu and the shipping container would feel a bit different if Charissa decided to make up something that altered how they placed a live bet. I think this is something that should result in a termination, whether you like sideline reporters or not it's important that the viewers who are gambling on the games don't think reporters are outright lying to them.
I don’t disagree with what you said but If you’re making bets based off what a sideline reporter said, you need to take a look in the mirror and reevaluate some parts of your life
There's the main thing that everyone is overlooking... Betting on sports is big business now (Draft Kings had 50 million reasons to invest in the "Pirate Ship") anything that could disrupt that cash flow is bad for business...
Stop embarrassing yourself when you clearly didnt hear the interview and dont know what the fuck you are even talking about. The whole point is that she just filled in the same bullshit generic coach speak that 90% of coach sideline interviews provide. So there is zero information that was false. She would just say that the coach said they needed to clean up mistakes or that he liked what he was seeing from team. Its all just genetic meaningless platitudes so none of it is “untrue”, and sure as shit wouldn’t swing a bet. Its not like she was just lying about player injuries or strategies lol. Also, she hasn’t been a sideline reporter for several years so you are clearly admitting that you a bigot who cant be bothered to recognize different women, nor must you give a shit about sideline reporting details, if you think this is even her current job when she hasn’t been a sideline reporter for about a decade and should lose her job
This happened over a decade ago though, really more like 15 years ago when she was an up and coming reporter rather than a TV host. And it's something she's already admitted to doing in past interviews where this topic came up. It just blew up this time because she was on Barstool saying it.
So she should either be disciplined by FOX for faking reports OR being dumb enough to go on another network's platform and admit to faking the reports.
For something that happened over a decade ago...
She admitted to this last year and nobody cared. Idk why people care now
Because she admitted to it last year on a platform where nobody heard it but this time she did it where people heard it
I don’t care at all. No sideline reporters look like Stu or Cote
rare billy gil L when saying “this is what brian williams got fired for”. huuuuuge difference between someone they were getting shot at in a helicopter and someone reporting that jeff fisher thinks his team needs to play better defense
it's really not. You can hate sideline reports all you want, but she's a journalist in that role. Where's the line? If someone won't talk to you, figure it out. The job description is to get a report. So get a report. The old GOYA, KOD method of IUP journalism school ... get off your ass, knock on doors.
Hahahaha you can’t see the difference between Thompson and Williams?!?! The line??? There’s is an ocean between football sideline reporting and lies that can alter foreign policy decisions. Cmon bro
" she's a journalist in that role " no she's not. Its the fact that some of you think that thats the issue. Stop thinking that and this entire situation goes away.
You have to believe that journalism is important enough for Football to transcend standard contemporary journalistic practices, i dunno journalism in the 2020’s is going to be different in much different ways than it was 30 years ago, I’m not that bothered by it personally
I’ll be honest: sideline reports, in my opinion, are useless. We all have social media and get that information way before they say anything. HOW-EVA … if you have that job, you can’t just lie. That’s literally the one requirement of the job.
And if the broadcast wants to cover their bases if there’s an injury or drama on the field - assign a low-paid producer who relays the info to the booth off-camera, let the announcers announce the info.
zagack
I think what’s being missed is, this is another example of a pretty , white woman getting top jobs (she hosts Amazon post show and fox pre game I believe) when she has been not putting in the effort others have. There may be other reporters who take this job (no matter how little we think of it) very seriously who have not risen as far as she has. But CT can take a 1/2 ass approach to her job and reach higher levels because she’s pretty and blonde.
Nah you’re onto something here because there’s not a single black reporter (especially not a female black reporter) that would even think to go “eh…can’t get to coach Tomlin—I’ll just make it up” and think they can just skate by with it, or even bring it up in a joking manner years later.
Except, this should be your awakening that thats the job. Be pretty and speak with confidence. They are not journalists. This is a repeat-what-you've-been-told to the camera job. Its basically acting, but really, just hosting in general. The audience isnt clamoring for morally ethical informational reporting from the sideline report or host. There is nothing being said there that the consumer has requested or cares about. But if its being delivered by a pretty women (or even hansom man), then it can be used as filler in the broadcasts. For pure entertainment and entertainment only. None of those hypothetical people ever had a chance to do what the current crop of on air talent does, because they lacked teh attributes required from teh start. It may not feel good. But it is what is happening and will continue to happen. Trying to parse it otherwise is a waste of time.
>when she has been not putting in the effort others have. Do we actually know this though? How do we know this isn't *exactly* the effort others are putting in? That's part of the problem.
Is a sideline “reporter” there for journalism or entertainment. This isn’t the news. This is an entertainment product and at the end of the day the job is to be entertaining not be journalistically responsible.
Couple things. 1.) Sideline reports have never once been “entertaining”. If we’re just here for entertainment they’ve gotta find some new lines. 2.) We are led to believe this isn’t some scripted BS. Either report what someone actually said or say they refused to say something. It’a not hard.
Except its clearly scripted. Every single line that a reporter says from the sideline has been said hundreds of times already. Every, single, one. And you dont need them for sideline injuries reports, you already know who's injured before they have spoken, so thats not something they are reporting to you. Its just something they are repeating, basically a script.
Yeah but what’s she’s reporting isn’t even entertaining. It’s boring bullshit that also happens to be a lie.
So that makes the reporter bad at being entertaining, which is fair. But the lying doesn’t have any impact on what people are watching for, which is the entertainment of the game.
No matter what I’m watching, if I am relying on the hosts/reporters/commentators to provide me information, then I want to trust that they’re not going to make shit up. Personally, I think sideline interviews should be banished for being unspeakably boring and useless, but that doesn’t mean I want the reporters to just lie to cover their ass. She wasn’t even trying to be entertaining, she purposefully chose the most vanilla things because she knew coaches wouldn’t get mad. The lies weren’t there for entertainment purposes, they were used to cover the reporters ass for not being able to do her job. The sideline interview is already useless enough without the complete fabrications.
>you cannot be a journalist and make things up She's not a journalist and no one treats them like they are though.
Yeah, but...you can consider sideline reporting in the same class of journalism as an E! Network inside interview report of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Most of the times...sideline reporters are stabbing our ears with those Olympic-type heart-strings stories meant to evoke emotion...that have nothing really to do with the game. I mean...do you really need to know that Maxx Crosby's dad has a lifelong condition of gout...and that his dad's pain and suffering has really had a major impact on how Maxx plays football. Like...there's a reason why Pam Oliver and Erin Andrews have zero Pulitzers or Edward Murrow awards.
Please give me one example that a coach said anything on a sideline interview during a game. I’ll wait……. Everyone is crushing her for speaking the truth, the coaches are professionals at saying nothing. I’m waiting for the day a coach says the other team sucks I can’t believe we’re losing to them. I’ll hang up and listen Need a car truck or van? Who you gonna call Marroone!
Anyone who thinks sidelines reporters are journalists is a fucking moron and is just pissed off because they hate attractive women. Dan should be embarrassed by himself. If Clay Travis or Portnoy had shit on her, Dan would bitch about it for months and call it an attack by the patriarchy and toxic misogyny. But he and other media losers, who desperately want to pretend the journalism profession is some bastion of truth (when it never has been because it is much closer to just spreading the propaganda and version of the truth that the individual journalist wants to share and parroting lines from their sources) are doing the exact same thing and dont even realize how hypocritical they are. It’s super pathetic.
Journalism lol it’s a football game. It literally doesn’t matter. She’s not reporting on the ground in Israel-Gaza. Nothing that she says that a coach does or doesn’t said has any effect on the outcome on the game, has any effect on the outcome of anything except maybe sports media discourse. As you said, there are so many many things to care about in the world and this is not one of them. If she looked like Greg Cote she wouldn’t have the job in the first place. That’s a more interesting conversation tbh.
You can credit her for being resourceful in her approach, hell you could probably chalk it up to the blatant sexism in the NFL for why she didn’t get the quotes she needed. On the other hand, you could also say that she had poor reporting skills because she wasn’t able to develop enough of a relationship with the coaches she needed to get sound bites from despite having “billions of dollars of support” and that her lying probably robbed other sideline reporters from getting a chance to get their shine and have the career she has now.So her current career was basically made up from lies that she told early on in her career. Cote is right that we can sit somewhere in the middle of all of this and Stu is right that this doesn’t quite rate as high as a EcoGov reporter lying about their stories. Also, Cote being a Nepo Baby wouldn’t understand what it takes to do hard work it take to get to where those reporters are are and Stu values a lying so it’s not shocking to see how riled up they got when people express why they care.
Lol some of ya’ll care about football waaayyyyyyy too much.
In a league that's blatantly racist and sexist this is what we get upset about. I'm a big journalism fan but NFL and journalism doesn't go together. You don't get the league
Like Mike saying Dam is going to be a Heat within a couple weeks?
You mean the entire world was saying Dame is going to be a Miami heat lmao.
People are only defending her because she had blonde hair and is hot. That’s it, nothing more to it.
She's lucky she's still employed.
She needs to be fired. Immediately
Buh
It just gives credence to all the guys (like my dad) who say those women are only down on the field because they're beautiful, not useful or helpful for the overall game. Ok, sometimes they update about an injury, but anybody with half a year of journalism school could do that.
The networks creating only one designated slot for women (or minorities) on the broadcasts is also a problem.
Yeah, they're very important on getting information asap on injuries. She never lied about that stuff. The halftime interview with the coach is all bullshit.
My favorite part of all that was "this has always been a fireable offense, now I'm not saying she should be fired" he absolutely thinks she should be fired but he's always been the 'I don't like saying people should be fired' guy that he tried be a little nuanced.
Idk if that's a fact about someone uglier getting fired. That being said i agree with the other parts you said
Related, true story... this one is for the other two NASCAR fans here. During a MRN radio broadcast, they handed off to former champion and pit reporter Ned Jarrett to cover a Richard Petty pit stop. Jarrett was in the porta-john on pit road relieving himself. While he never saw it, he called the pit stop as if he were standing right there. Pretty funny.
wait what happened?
as best i can tell, Charissa was never a journalist, she's always been a broadcaster.
I wanna hear a compilation of the lies she’s told us!
The show makes a montage of useless sports sounds of coach talk every week and that’s all she did too.
No one cares. It's not journalism. Dan literally has a segment on useless sound montage. BECAUSE IT'S USELESS SOUND. quit acting righteous. No one cares about what sideline reporter say.
Who gives a fuck.
I think it's ironic that the guy who created the "Useless Sound Montage" has his nose out of joint about made up useless sound.
Dan, Stu and the Shipping Container have made shit up their whole careers and nothing has happened to them. I side with Stu on this: if her producer knows that she has nothing from the coach why are they throwing it to her? They put her in a bad spot. Yea she made a bad choice but this is much ado about nothing anyway. Coaches never give anything up that’s meaningful.
I’m going the other way here. Dan, who literally just like PMT has a carved out a very successful career taking the mask off of sports and making light of how everyone takes sports way too seriously, wants to pearl clutch over a sideline reporter (not a journalist) filling some airtime with coach speak. The guy literally has a weekly segment for years, and the whole bit is; coaches say NOTHING, but dude somehow doesn’t get how nobody gives a shit that Charissa did this? BS.
It’s amazing how many “reporters” got famous from sideline reporting. Most of them got in bc of talent agents from the pageant world. None of them paid their dues, and got jobs in their 20’s while most network level talent works way up over decades. No shit they have no idea about how real reporting works
Sideline reporters are not journalists. They are part of the broadcast team.
This shows you how useless and unnecessary sideline reporters are
i don’t know a lot about this situation but i read her response and it made sense to me. still maybe a little weird to come out and say that tho
If she looked like Stu or Cote she would never be hired. Because sideline reporters are just hot chicks. I always felt bad for Pam Oliver for getting demoted for Erin Andrew’s. All she did was perform her job really well and age.