Often fired, sideline reporters now have to deal with the consequences of fabrications

Since Thursday afternoon, people in the sports media industry, especially women, have been talking about one thing: that prominent broadcaster Charissa Thompson casually offered in an interview that she had made up reports while working as a sideline reporter.

Young women just starting their careers in sports journalism asked each other in group chats if the kind of practice Ms. Thompson described was OK. Veteran journalists who have held prominent side roles as reporters said they carefully crafted statements to post on social media, with their impulse to defend their profession outweighing their reluctance to criticize another woman.

Andrea Kremer, an Emmy-winning sportswriter who has both reported from the sidelines of NFL games and called them from the broadcast booth, described the damage from Thompson’s comments as “profound.” In particular, she said, it hurt those who worked as sidelines reporters, who are expected to provide news during the game on things like injury updates and elicit immediate responses from coaches and players.

It’s a role that’s all about building trust with both the teams and competitions being broadcast and the viewing public. It is dismissed by some viewers, who say the questions asked of players and coaches are often banal, leading to generic answers. And for female sidelines reporters, that disrespect can often come with the sexist trope that the most important thing they can do on air is look good.

“The side role has always been questioned about its necessity, and I think I have explained to you that this is incorrect,” Ms. Kremer said in an interview on a landline Friday morning, her cell phone pinging repeatedly in the background.

“But,” she added, “I don’t remember anyone ever asking, ‘Did they make that up?’ Now there is that core of doubt.”

Ms. Thompson was a sideline reporter for Fox from 2008 through 2010 and now hosts a Fox N.FL. pregame show and Amazon Prime’s “Thursday Night Football.” During the day a segment On Barstool Sports’ “Pardon My Take” podcast this week, Ms. Thompson said that during games where a coach wouldn’t talk to her at halftime or came out of the locker room late, she would “sometimes make up the report.” .” She said she was fine with it as no coach would object to her quoting stock comments about the team’s performance.

On Friday morning, Ms Thompson disavowed what she said on the podcast. “I have never lied or been unethical about anything during my time as a sports broadcaster,” she wrote on Instagram. Ms Thompson said if a coach did not provide information during a halftime interview, she would report her own observations and not attribute them to anyone.

Representatives for Fox and Amazon declined to comment and would not make Ms. Thompson available for an interview.

This is not the first time Ms. Thompson has made this specific claim. In an exchange last year On the podcast that she co-hosts with Fox sideline reporter Erin Andrews, Ms. Thompson described a specific instance in which, she said, she made a report during a Detroit Lions game in 2008 after the team’s coach, Rod Marinelli, told her told her he liked her perfume. instead of answering her question. Ms. Andrews intervened and said, “I did that too,” for “a coach I didn’t want to throw under the bus because he was telling me all the wrong things!”

Jill Fritzo, a spokeswoman for Ms. Andrews, said: “Throughout her career, Erin Andrews has worked very closely with coaches, players and public relations staff to ensure the accuracy of her reporting.” She added that Ms Andrews meant she used information from previous meetings with coaches to include in her reports, and that she was always “clear” during the broadcast about where her information came from.

Both women hold high-profile positions with enormous reach. Perhaps because of this, the public reaction from many of their counterparts was widespread.

Lisa Salters, the sideline reporter for ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” Posted on CBS’s Tracy Wolfson wrote at

Lesley Visser, the NFL’s first female sideline reporter, said in an interview that “what I feel about that careless comment is that it almost seems like gaining ground is not safe.” She added: “Suddenly it’s, ‘They don’t matter, they’re eye candy.’ It is so deflating to me that ground gained is not safe. I thought people wouldn’t challenge that role in 2023.”

Neither Ms. Visser nor Laura Okmin, an NFL broadcaster for Fox and on radio for Westwood One, remembers that side reporting was seen as women’s role when she started. Mrs Visser was preceded at ABC by former player Lynn Swann. Ms. Okmin was drawn to the job in the early 2000s because it was the opportunity to cover the game from an access point that no other reporter had.

“Somewhere along the way it turned into a need to justify the value of this role,” Ms. Okmin said. “And not so coincidentally: it coincided with the fact that it really became a role for women.”

Ms. Okmin runs an organization called GALvanize to train and connect women pursuing careers in sports broadcasting, and she said she had received numerous questions about Ms. Thompson’s comments. The responses encouraged her to speak out publicly.

“If someone just says, ‘I made it up sometimes,’ that’s a deeper cut than just a flippant comment,” she said. “It goes to the core of what we always do, what justifies our role.”

Reporting from the sidelines is a challenging task to do well. Veterans advise newcomers to wear sneakers, because they can travel at least eight kilometers racing through the stadium. Sideline reporters must prepare all week to navigate the weather, grumpy coaches, breaking news in real time and seconds-long windows in which to relay information to a television audience of millions.

And when they return to their hotel rooms, some have faced dangerous harassment from obsessive viewers.

Ms. Kremer, who covered sports and its major issues for five years as a sideline reporter for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” estimated that perhaps 1 percent of the reporting she did leading up to the game would make it on air. . Just before the kickoff of Super Bowl XLIII between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals, she reported that Pittsburgh receiver Hines Ward had received a platelet-rich plasma injection in order to play in the game. To break that news to a live television audience, Ms. Kremer confirmed it with three different people, including Mr. Ward during the walk-through the day before the game.

She said she believed the impact of Ms Thompson’s confession would not be transitory. “This even transcends just sideline reporting and sports, because in the climate we are in today, where fake news is part of the lexicon, someone is admitting that they made something up,” Ms. Kremer said.

She added: “It’s just so hard for all the hardworking people out there who now have to have this as another obstacle. I feel like an entire position, an entire role, has been devalued and made a mockery of.”