On yet another glorious day of holiday weekend football, it’s as good a time as any to tackle an NFL controversy that disappeared quicker than the Jets on third down.
While most analysts and insiders are focused on which head coaches and offensive coordinators should lose their jobs, there is one fan favorite who should be cut from the squad immediately.
As in a week ago.
Charissa Thompson is a host on Fox Sports and Amazon Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football.”
Before Thompson was rewarded with each of these coveted, high-profile sports gigs, she was an up-and-coming sideline reporter— emphasis on reporter — tasked with providing in-game updates, player profiles and interviews with coaches.
But instead of giving fans the inside scoop about what was happening on the field, Thompson was committing the cardinal sin of broadcast journalism.
She was making stuff up.
“I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again,” Thompson said on a recent “Pardon My Take” podcast, “I would make up the reports sometimes because … the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime or it was too late and I was like, ‘I didn’t want to screw up the report,’ so I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up.
“No coach is gonna 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,’” added Thompson, who started work as an NFL sideline reporter for Fox Sports during the late 2000s.
“Like, they’re not gonna correct me on that. I’m like, it’s fine, I’ll just make up the report.”
For me, the most alarming part of the quote isn’t the making stuff up stuff.
It’s the I-haven’t-been-fired-for-saying-it-so-I’ll-say-it-again part.
Looks to me like white privilege. If it isn’t, I don’t know what is.
Sideline update: Thompson still hasn’t been fired.
Sure, it’s just football, but even in sports, credibility counts.
Thompson cheated. She admitted she cheated. She volunteered that she cheated. And she is still allowed to sit behind a microphone on game day.
There are two basic rules in journalism, whether you’re a sideline reporter or a war correspondent: You don’t plagiarize, and you don’t make stuff up.
The social media backlash was swift and harsh, especially from Black women in the journalism industry who called out Thompson’s white privilege.
“What we heard today called all sideline reporters into question,” tweeted Lisa Salters, one of the industry’s top sideline reporters.
Thompson has since apologized, but she never got so much as a penalty flag for her transgressions.
Her punishment? Singing with country star Garth Brooks during a halftime interview on the Jets game that aired Friday on Amazon Prime.
If Black sideline reporters, like Salters or Pam Oliver, who practically invented the art, had made up sideline reports, they’d be benched quicker than a third-string quarterback after throwing a pick-6.
It all comes down to two words.
“Trust and credibility,” Salters wrote. “They mean everything to a journalist. To violate either one — in any way — not only makes a mockery of the profession, but is a disservice to players, coaches and, most importantly, to fans.”
A Garth Brooks duet? At least she didn’t make up the lyrics.
LEONARD GREENE: No penalty for NFL sideline reporter Charissa Thompson fabricating reports is right out of white privilege playbook
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28.11.2023
On yet another glorious day of holiday weekend football, it’s as good a time as any to tackle an NFL controversy that disappeared quicker than the Jets on third down.
While most analysts and insiders are focused on which head coaches and offensive coordinators should lose their jobs, there is one fan favorite who should be cut from the squad immediately.
As in a week ago.
Charissa Thompson is a host on Fox Sports and Amazon Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football.”
Before Thompson was rewarded with each of these coveted, high-profile sports gigs, she was an up-and-coming sideline reporter— emphasis on reporter — tasked with providing in-game updates, player profiles and interviews with coaches.
But instead of giving fans the inside scoop about what was happening on the field, Thompson was committing the cardinal sin of........
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