Fox Sports’ Charissa Thompson admits she made up sideline reports; journalists outraged

Fox Sports’ Charissa Thompson admits she made up sideline reports; journalists outraged

Fox Sports and Amazon Prime Video host Charissa Thompson has admitted she has made up sideline reports, and her colleagues are speaking up.

Thompson joined Barstool’s Dan Katz and PFT Commenter on “Pardon My Take” and made the revelation.

“I’ve said this before,” Thompson said, per Awful Announcing. “I haven’t been fired to saying it, but I’ll say it again. I would make up the report sometimes, because A, the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime, or it was too late and I didn’t want to screw up the report. So I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up.’

“Because first of all, 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.’ They’re not gonna correct me on that. So I’m like, it’s fine, I’ll just make up the report.”

Amazon responded, per Awful Announcing, which said, “She was telling a story from 15 years ago.”

Thompson’s admission has caused quite a stir among her colleagues.

NFL on CBS Tracy Wolfson called Thompson’s actions “absolutely not ok, not the norm and upsetting on so many levels. I take my job very seriously. I hold myself accountable for all I say, I build trust with coaches and never make something up.”

“A good portion of the public doesn’t trust the media as is,” Chris Kirschner posted. “I cannot believe she would proudly admit this. This causes significant harm to the people who actually take the job seriously. It’s entirely unethical and worthy of never working in the field again.”

Per Awful Announcing, Thompson admitted to something similar two years ago on her podcast with Erin Andrews. Thompson and Andrews both admitted to taking liberties with some of their sideline reports but not going as far as admitting they were making up reports.