Place Your Bets: The Casino-fication of News

CORY BARKER: Scroll through a prediction market and it looks a lot like a financial news dashboard: outcomes listed, prices moving, a clock counting down. At first, the questions seem familiar: sports outcomes, pop-culture moments, offhand predictions that feel more like entertainment than analysis. Then one market stops you. It asks whether a famine will be declared in Gaza. Same interface. Same mechanics. But suddenly it’s clear what’s being traded: human suffering. With people positioned to profit from mass starvation. This is, unfortunately, a real example from the prediction market platform Kalshi. And it helps explain why prediction markets raise serious ethical questions — especially as they become increasingly intertwined with news coverage. Prediction markets themselves aren’t new. What is new is their growing role in the news media. CNN and CNBC have both entered partnerships with Kalshi to integrate prediction market data into their reporting. CNN’s deal is already in place. CNBC’s begins in 2026. Partnerships like these will put betting odds directly into mainstream news. Supporters argue prediction markets are efficient tools; a way to aggregate information or forecast outcomes more accurately than polls or pundits. But critics warn that when journalism starts borrowing the logic of gambling, something fundamental changes. Events stop being reported for their meaning and consequences and start being framed in terms of odds, momentum, and payouts. The future becomes something to speculate on, not something to understand.

MATT JORDAN: There’s a real concern that when these market shifts are amplified by major news outlets, they could be mistaken for genuine signals about real-world events, shaping not only how the news is reported, but potentially influencing the outcomes themselves.

That raises a serious question: when journalism starts adopting the logic of betting markets, what does that mean for accountability, ethics, and a free press? To help us unpack that, we’re talking with Judd Legum, founder and editor of Popular Information. Judd has been closely examining the growing influence of prediction markets on news coverage, and what this “casino-fication” of information could mean for public trust, democratic decision-making, and the future of a free press. Judd, welcome. Welcome to News Over Noise.

JUDD LEGUM: Thanks for having me.

MATT JORDAN: So, tell us a little bit about what prediction markets are and where they came from.

JUDD LEGUM: I mean, I think obviously the idea of betting on some future event has been around for, for quite some, quite some time. But these are really risen to prominence in recent years as the legalities of them were resolved. There were a number of players. Polymarket probably was the most prominent one that were ought to began offering these kinds of markets on all sorts of things politics, sports, what have you. But they were operating, really under the assumption that it was illegal in the United States. They weren't technically available in the United States, although many people got around that restriction through VPNs and other technical means. But then what happened was that Kalshi effectively sued the federal government, saying that what they were doing was legal. This was around the 2024 election, and their ability to have them offer a market on that, and that was eventually, decided in their favor, which effectively legalized, for Kalshi, the market under the auspices of the CFTC. And since then, they've operated in, you know, effectively, the federal government has condoned these this practice, the ability to set up a market over almost anything. And, since then, the popularity has exploded.

MATT JORDAN: They were being, as you said, both investigated by the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission. And also, there was some congressional pushback in 2023 about this, but that oversight to stopped. What happened? What stopped the oversight and the idea that being able to bet on anything, anywhere, at any time would be a bad thing?

JUDD LEGUM: Well, I think there's two things. There was this very specific legal dispute about the politics betting and the betting on the 2024 election. So, eventually a federal court ruled in favor of Kalshi that this wasn't illegal. What they're arguing is that this isn't actually gambling. This is a market like any other market that might be available for a stock or some other asset. So, that was resolved. That meant that they could offer these markets on, you know, the presidential election and presumably on for other elections. They're probably less interested in, you know, betting on some random congressional election. But you could do it under that precedent. Then the Trump administration came in. You could sort of fight it on each substantive category. You could have decided, like, okay, well, maybe it's okay with politics, but when you're moving into sports or when you're moving into all of the other, like random things that are now available to bet on, we're going to argue that it's illegal there and we're going to fight you on it. That has not been what they've done. What they've done is said, okay, we are going to allow this. You kind of give us a heads up when you offer a any kind of new market, and we'll let you know if we see any problems with it. And, you know, that's been the route that the Trump administration has taken. That's allowed them Kalshi to form all sorts of partnerships with, you know, different prominent organizations and to really raise their profile and raise the awareness of the platform itself, which, you know, in turn has raised the usage.

CORY BARKER: We're going to talk about the integration of the call platform into CNN and CNBC in a moment. But I wanted to ask you, as we're on this background point, how do you think we and our audience can best understand the integration of this type of market into news coverage? Right? Do you see this as an extension of kind of post 538, like, obsession with data and pulling data in particular? Is it really, you know, a byproduct of just the increased accessibility of sports gambling on our phones? Is it a combination of those things? Is it something else? Like, how else can we think about the emergence of this as something that news companies are using in the reporting and then obviously, like, actually partnering with to integrate into their product?

JUDD LEGUM: I mean, to me, it comes down to fundamentally what is news and why are people interested in it. And I think our kind of traditional understanding of news, and this has never been the full driving force behind it, but kind of at its most idealized, in its most idealized version, people are of this world. They care about their neighborhood, their country, the international community, because they are a part of it. They want to understand it. And so, news seeks to fill that need. It's going to educate people about the world because they're interested in it. And maybe when they find out about it, they don't like what's going on and they're going to engage in some way. Maybe that's just voting for a particular candidate, maybe that's something more, or maybe they're going to attend a protest. Maybe they're going to start an activist group. Who knows? That's one version. But I think the other version, and this has always been a part of it, is news is entertainment. We're not really going to do anything with this information. It's not really important to me as a person in some way, but I'm watching it the same way. I'm watching, you know, The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. I'm watching it as entertainment. There's interesting things going on, and I'm kind of interested in the characters and what's happening. And I think when you make when you turn everything into a betting opportunity, I think you're elevating that part of news. Not that it, news, was pure before this and then it corrupted news. I think this was always part of news from the very beginning, this was always part of news. And there's a there's a rich tradition of kind of tabloid news and news as entertainment but I think it takes it to another level because it essentially abstracts every news story and it makes it into just another way to potentially make some money. No matter, no matter what's at stake. You know, I think famously, you know, Kalshi was criticized because it had a betting market on whether what was happening in Gaza would be deemed a genocide or not. And I think obviously that's a very extreme version, but that's what's going on in all these, you know, when it's applied to news in for all these different stories.

MATT JORDAN: So, you know, one of my favorite movies about the news is Sidney Lumet's Network, right. And one of the characters that they have in the exaggerated cartoon version of the news, there's the NewsHour. One of the characters is Sibyl the Soothsayer. Should news be doing prognostication and prediction anyway?

JUDD LEGUM: Well, I've long been a critic of that version of news which has been on the rise even before Kalshi and Polymarket and others sort of rose to prominence. And ultimately, you know, if you just look at where this comes up the most, which is presidential elections. And, if you think about there's a limited amount of time that any platform, any outlet has to cover the election. Now, on the first Tuesday in November, or hopefully at least shortly thereafter, you will know who is president and who lost. But so much of that news hole, you know, is the industry term is filled up with people crunching the numbers, figuring out, trying to predict what happens that day, but actually politics is a dynamic process, meaning the coverage itself and people's understanding. It changes that people's views and people's opinions. So, even if you were able to and of course, polling is not this exact, but even if you were able to determine with 100% accuracy exactly what the outcome of the election were to be, if it was held on, say, August 1st, 2024, instead of in November, it would not tell you the outcome because there's those months and people are human beings who are changing their minds based on information that they are collecting. So, there really isn't much value to this. I think it's become popular for a couple of reasons. One is, it's a great way to avoid seeming biased in one way or another. When you're talking about the data, there's an objectivity to it. We're not talking about what the impact of this policy would be, or that policy, and having to make kind of embed some value judgments, or at least open us up to being seen as biased in that way. We're just talking about the numbers. Secondly, there's always a lot of angst within the public about what is going to happen on both sides. So, you're playing into that angst because people want assurances. They want to resolve that uncertainty. The uncertainty cannot be resolved, but it these, you know, the graphs that are produced, the trends, the percentages. You can look on Kalshi, you can say, okay, well who's going to win in 2028? Okay. Well, looks like, you know, this person has a 34% chance. Okay. Well, I know that that person has a 34% chance now. So now I have less uncertainty about, and there's only a 1% chance that this person will win. Okay, so now I think I have less uncertainty about it. You don't really, but you think you do.

CORY BARKER: When we talk about these particular agreements or integrations with CNN and CNBC and Kalshi, what does that look like? What type of partnerships are we seeing? How is this actually influencing or plan to influence or shape the coverage that we see on these cable channels, on their websites, in their various digital platforms?

JUDD LEGUM: I think, you know, these are relatively new agreements. So, I think to a certain extent, we're still learning what that will look like. Already we have seen as issues are being discussed, they'll display the betting odds on a particular issue. What might happen. You know, is Trump going to invade Venezuela. You know. Well, again. And we'll see the odds of that happening. And I also think because they have this arrangement and we're not sure about the financial particulars, it does create conflicts because it incentivizes certain kinds of coverage. Meaning if these deals and this is speculative now, but if these deals involve, say, these networks getting a cut of increased betting activity around certain news events, it could incentivize covering them in ways that might drive more betting. And that is a substantively different kind of coverage than if you were just trying to inform people to the maximum extent possible.

MATT JORDAN: You know, it's interesting these they're classified as derivative markets technically. So, insider trading is legal or legit, I guess I should say. Instead of buying a commodity or buying a concept, what is there to protect consumers who happen to engage with these platforms from fraud? You know, there's a lot of speculation out there that Karoline Leavitt stopped her press conference short the other day because there was a prediction market position on 65 minutes. And so, this kind of created a buzz around it. So, what's to keep actors like that? Who could control these things from putting a position down and then making sure they win?

JUDD LEGUM: I think the answer is very little. Now these markets, including Kalshi, they do have rules that would prevent somebody like Karoline Leavitt or people who are talking to her or know you know her from using that information to bet in that market. You know, and they actually have a list, you know, you can you can go on their website and if you dig around enough, you can find the list of interested parties who are prohibited in each market. The problem is one that's not a legal restriction. And secondly, what is the enforcement mechanism? And, as far as we know, I mean, these there's no, you know, Kalshi doesn't have the ability to be inside the white House and figure out who Karoline Leavitt’s talking to. You know, that's just not going to happen. You know, there are sort of general restrictions against fraud. Maybe you could argue that if there was some sort of conspiracy to, you know, stop a press conference earlier and there was somebody betting based on that information, that that would be sort of generalized fraud. But unlike the FCC, which has very robust enforcement mechanisms and has a whole history of doing this, the CFTC is much more limited in their investigatory capacity and has no experience whatsoever investigating markets like this. You know, these kind of prediction markets. As you mentioned, it's traditionally, you know, derivative markets for commodities. And the whole point is, hey, you know, I know that, you know, I'm a I'm a oil company. I know that there's going to be this increase in, or I'm that maybe I'm a company that buys oil. So, I know and I know we're going to need a lot next year, so there's going to be this increase in demand. So, I'm going to hedge against any potential increase. I'm going to drive up by my increased demand by buying these oil futures. That's the whole that's what's seen as a appropriate use of the market. So, they're not used to looking at, people using inside information. Certainly not used to these prediction markets. So, there's, there's very little protection to the for the consumer. And as these things get more and more specific, more and more random, where it's literally just one person deciding to say a word or to do a thing, it becomes much more, you know, subject to abuse.

CORY BARKER: You hit on this a little bit, but what do you feel like these types of partnerships or integrations say about how corporate news companies view their audience and view their overall mission?

JUDD LEGUM: Well, I think that they are increasingly desperate to avoid any allegation of bias, either by their audience, but especially from the current administration. And I think they view this kind of coverage as sort of a very attractive, kind of sexy way to cover the news that doesn't have those issues. In fact, there's a lot of people associated with the Trump administration, Donald Trump Jr. and others who are integrated within this crowd, the boards of these of these companies or advisory boards. So that's what I think it's really about. They're looking for ways to do this. And I think they're also looking for new ways to bring in revenue, you know, and increasingly, no matter what industry, you're talking about, gambling is seen as the best way to, you know, whether it's sports or, or the media or anything else, gambling is seen as the way to increase revenues. And, you know, I think that's the direction a lot of these media organizations are going.

MATT JORDAN: It's interesting that we talked with somebody earlier about, you know, prop betting and sports gambling and ESPN’s, you know, kind of integration with FanDuel, etc. And one of the positions, he said was that it's not really about them getting a cut of the house's take because the house always wins. It's that people will stay tuned. Right. So, do you foresee if that's the case? You know, because if the game's a blowout, but you have a parlay on Saquon Barkley, you know, getting six touchdowns or whatever, you'll watch till the end. Do you see that logic being operating and operating the news. And would you expect them to time the, you know, announcement of certain things that might be hedged in Polymarket or Kalshi till the end of the program?

JUDD LEGUM: I think that's certainly you know it's something you know, frankly I haven't hadn't thought about it that much until you brought it up. But I think I've certainly another benefit. Meaning that if you're if you if you now bet on, you know, this news event, if you're betting on, you know, is Donald Trump going to buy Greenland or invade Greenland or whatever, whatever the plan is to get Greenland, you're going to be tuned in and want to see where which way the winds are blowing. You know, maybe I need to cash out my position. Maybe I need to increase my position. You're going to be very engaged in that news article or that news story from, economic perspective. So, I think, you know, finding ways to like, engage people in that way. Certainly, that's I think one of the reasons that that that the sports leagues, have embraced this after, you know, many years my whole, you know. Basically my, my whole childhood and most of my adulthood, you know, the, the, the leagues were adamantly against gambling and, you know, wouldn't have teams in Las Vegas and, you know, were very keen, not extremely hard on anyone who was even, you know, remotely involved in gambling. You know, I, you know, I think they see it both as a direct revenue source because they have deals with them, but also just engaging people because they know if you've got even $20 on the game, you're going to watch probably that whole game, at least until your bet resolves. And so, yeah, I could see that happening in the news. I think these political markets right now are probably too small to, you know, to show up in the, in the Nielsen's ratings would be my guess. But yeah, we're just right at the very beginning of this. I mean, this was in 2024. We didn't even know if this was legal. You know, so people were engaged on it, but they were engaged. You know, it was only people who were ready to be on the very cutting edge of this and take a lot of legal risks just by being engaged in it. You know, this 2025 was really the first full year. So, we'll have really the first election, major election that where this is this kind of betting or markets, as I guess they would prefer you call it is available would be would be this year.

CORY BARKER: And I think it's interesting has we're framing this in relationship to the to the integration of sports betting into sports programing in in broadcasts. Naturally we all know that live sports broadcasts have been one of the, if not the only thing that's kind of survived the degradation of, you know, cord cutting and people, you know, transitioning to streaming and all of those related things. And so, the legalization of sports betting only kind of further catalyzed or solidified live sports broadcasting as like a go to thing in the television ecosystem. I think what's interesting about this move is that there's millions of people, especially younger people, who might be interested in this type of markets or betting whatever, you know, we're talking about here, that don't have that built in sort of routine of muscle of like ever watching CNN or CNBC on television. Right? It'll be interesting, and I don't know if you have any thoughts about how these companies may try to use markets like Kashi in Polymarket as a way to try to get people to actually watch their television programing or, you know, using that as some sort of carrot to integrate what people are seeing on their phones and what could then be on, you know, the television product, because it feels like that's going to be a hard hurdle for them to cross. Whereas with sports audiences, the audience was already massive and already there. To some extent, betting just made it easier or different, you know?

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah, I think it's going to be a challenge for sure. And one of the big differences I see is that in a sports betting context, the way to know what's happening is to watch it live. That's how you're going to get the best, newest information. You know, if you want to find out who's injured, you know, before they even announce it, if you're watching the game, you can see the person fall to the ground, maybe, you know, maybe you can figure out if they're injured. In news, it's very rarely the case these days that the news is breaking. First, on television, you can almost always get it online. So, I think anyone who's really seriously engaged in these markets is not going to be relying on television news to kind of adjust their position. So, I think it's maybe one of those things that kind of sounds good, I don't know. But I don't know how well, how well thought out it is. I see I see the benefit for sure, for a company like Kalshi and others who I'm sure are looking to make similar deals as it just raises you don't, you know, doesn't or all they want to do, they just need people to know that they're around and that they exist and that this kind of market is available because it's so new. They don't need people to stick around to the CNN and or CNBC or anything like that.

MATT JORDAN: So, you know, these things claim to be better prognostic tools than polls. You know, there's been already been a lot of critique of polls as a driver of the news cycles, right? That polling companies give the news something to talk about in a way, to a horse, horse race, the whole thing so that people bet on it or, and, you know, pick the winner. And it has a kind of a deleterious impact on democracy and deliberation about, you know, a third-party candidates, women candidates, people who aren't have name recognition, etc. The… those interested that the CEO said Kalshi is replacing debate subjectivity in talk with markets, accuracy and truth. Is this a positive development for deliberative democracy to have debate and subjectivity replaced with markets, accuracy and truth?

JUDD LEGUM: I think even if that were true, it would not be positive. But I think the in addition to not being positive, I think it's also not true. The problem is, is that these markets are incredibly subject to manipulation. I think particularly in the political context. I think the, the latest data I saw for 2025 was that Kalshi was something like $50 billion as far as the, you know, the scope of how much money is being bet lot. That's a lot of money. $50 million is a lot of money. But if you look at something like the stock market, I think it's close to $650 billion every day that's traded in stocks. So, you have essentially a tiny market. And of course, that's everything all put together. If you look at any individual market, it's going to be much smaller. You know, I bet the presidential betting markets are probably relatively robust, a relatively large section, although most of that is going to be in sports. But, you know, if you're just looking at the presidential one, if you go down to a Senate race or congressional race, it's going to be even smaller, and someone can very easily for probably well under, but, you know, at least no more than a couple of million dollars would it take to spike one of these markets, spike one candidate over another. And I think that's where the CNN integration and integration with news organizations becomes particularly problematic because it sets up kind of this reinforcing cycle where you can get somebody with, with some cash, a couple of million dollars, you can pump it into a candidate that will drive positive coverage. Essentially, hey, this candidate has momentum. You know, maybe they'll talk about, oh, well, my why might they have this momentum? Well, they're delivering a really effective message on Social Security or whatever it happens to be. Then people know about that message that, you know, then it becomes more effective. The market goes up more. There's another story really just leaves it open for all sorts of kind of dirty tricks, behind the scenes stuff to manipulate things. And, and I don't think people have begun to really consider that. And if you think about the people who are most enthusiastic about these markets, people in, you know, the, the AI space, the crypto space, they're also some of the biggest players in politics these days. So, I don't think it's out of the. Yeah, I don't think it's so speculative that this could happen, you know, in 2020 for the crypto industry. The crypto super PAC was the biggest one. And I think we're going to expect the new AI super PAC to be the biggest spender in 2026 and 2028. So, in the context of two, three, $500 million super PACs, you know, 1 million or 2 to, to spike a market, I don't think and create a positive story for a favored candidate. I don't think it's out of the question. And you wouldn't even have to say, hey, this was manipulation. You could just say, hey, I believe in this guy. I believe he's running a good campaign, and I think he's going to win. That's why I put $1 million down on candidate X.

MATT JORDAN: Yeah, it's an agenda setting tool as well in terms of media.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah.

MATT JORDAN: And so, I was looking at Peter Thiel has put, you know, 70 million into Kalshi. He also has a stake in Polymarket. Obviously, he's not a neutral player in this. So, I'm wondering if this that the I don't know, I'll just categorize them as anti-democracy forces. Might these prediction markets be forcing multipliers for bad faith messaging? And the people who are trying to manipulate the news?

JUDD LEGUM: Well… I think the way I look at it is it's a mechanism. I think there's a lot of problems with polling. Let me start there. Methodological problems. And then some of the problems I was talking about before that, it's a snapshot in time. But one thing you can say about polling is every person basically counts the same. You know, there's some weighting and things like that. But for the most part, you called the person, they tell you your opinion, and then that becomes what sets the narrative. This is really an effort by people like Peter Thiel and others to replace the person with the dollar, you know? And so, it's another way in which money is setting the agenda and money determines who has the best chance of winning. And I just don't really buy in the context of a presidential election where the basically the most powerful institution on earth, the United States federal government, is at stake, that, you know, markets of these size could even begin to be seen as objective rather than sort of tools to drive what the result might be. And so, I think it's very dangerous to the extent that people believe that these are more accurate, especially when there's absolutely no track record in which to base that on. You know, it's like, what are they basing that on? There's nothing. Like we don't have anything to base that on. Maybe one election at best, where we believe that where most people believed and it was of questionable legality for most of the election.

CORY BARKER: One of the things I keep thinking about during our conversation and in my research for this episode, is the increased legalization of sports gambling, gambling in general on our phones. The legalization of these markets through Kalshi and Polymarket are, themselves, massive stories should be massive beats that newsrooms are covering across the world., that the degree of money floating in and out of here, as we've talked about the increased number of people who are using these things, should be beats themselves. And yet we have companies instead, sort of further integrating themselves with whether it's, you know, Sportsbook or Kalshi or Polymarket. So, I mean, how are audiences, if at all, supposed to trust that these news organizations are going to cover what is a massive story topic, potential beat in and of itself when they're even further, deeply integrated with it, without there just being increased skepticism or apathy? Confusion? It just seems like on one hand, we have news organizations talk about wanting to build back trust or whatever and then makes decisions like this. Doesn't that just sort of further create confusion and, and, and distrust or at least skepticism of how news organizations are operating?

JUDD LEGUM: I think that's right. You know, and I think if you if you look at that sports comparison, you know, we kind of have a little bit of an insight into how this plays out and what we've seen, even though kind of the full or near full legalization of sports betting is relatively new, as we've seen, numerous high profile betting scandals. Just this week you had a college basketball scandal with dozens of players, and I think it was something like close to 20 schools, 17 schools. I can't remember the exact number who are involved in in point shaving and other kinds of activities to reward bettors. I think players were being offered $10,000-$30,000 to, you know, I guess reduced the score or how, however, they were trying to tilt the bets when this stuff is covered. You know, if you look at the coverage of ESPN, there's never really a connection. You know, they'll cover the story, but there's never really a connection to this seems to be a product of the fact that these you can now bet on anything, anytime, anywhere, on any game. You know, I think it would be a lot more difficult to, you know, make money off of these obscure college basketball games. If the only place you could make a bet was Las Vegas, now you can make a bet from your phone from almost any state. So, if you look about, you know, how is that going to be? How is that going to translate over into the political realm? You know, you can have politicians being paid to drop out. You know, if somebody can make $10 million, if a candidate X wins, why not offer candidate Y $5 million to drop out of that race? Or why not offer… you know, obviously there's a long history of opposition research and, you know, the impact of, negative story on a candidate. Why not offer a news organization $1 million to run a story, whether it's true or not, that's negative about a candidate. And then while people are figuring it out and the market moves cash out there. So, I think there's all sorts of sort of corollaries to what we've seen in the sports world that could emerge in the political world, especially as more and more money is at stake. I mean, I think right now the reality is there's probably not enough money to be made in these markets that that would be worth it. But, you know, if the presidential market itself is worth $5 billion or $10 billion, well, then there's going to be huge incentives for this stuff, even for stories that could move the percentages by a percent or two. You don't necessarily need to fix the election. All you need to do is change the narrative for a day or a couple of days and use that to profit.

MATT JORDAN: Yeah. One of the things that, people have long talked about in relation to the news is in the way that it's broadcast, right, that you have a news anchor reading stories about puppies at the 4-H shows, right next to a story about a mass murderer, and usually without skipping a beat. Right. So, there's a kind of a context collapse that happens. This seems to me something that would cause that to happen at a much larger degree. Right? That you can bet, right now, on whether there's mass starvation in Gaza, whether Israel will start a nuclear war with Iran. You can bet on whether, the ICE agent who killed Renee Nicole Good will be charged by the end of March. What the percentage of chance is or [inaudible], all of these things that are gamified and then collapsed into this, you know, this ticker tape and, what starts to bleed away, it seems to me, is context, narrative discussion of the stakes of these things. Right? So, when we're not talking about the stakes, I wonder what service the news is doing for a deliberative democracy when all we're talking about is the odds and the end result.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah, I, I agree with that to a large extent. You know, if you're talking about somebody, a mother, who was, you know, killed by, by an ICE agent, I don't think that that should be a moneymaking opportunity for someone, especially you know, in the context of what will happen to the person who killed her. And when you when you do that, and you essentially make it indistinguishable on the platform from, you know, whether, you know, an announcer uses their catchphrase during the Lakers’ game tonight, you do trivialize it. And if that's the, I think if that's the lens in which the public largely views news events, it's not a neutral lens. It is in service of a particular ideology. That's… that essentially is almost exclusively market driven, that wherever the most money, you know, sort of kind of the, the corollary to might is right where the might is whoever has the most dollars.

MATT JORDAN: Yeah.

CORY BARKER: I feel like I know the answer to this, but do you have any sort of positive thoughts about this potential integration into the news product? Is there any world or even in in a small corner of how news is, is produced and distributed, that the integration with these markets is useful for the public or, you know, useful for journalists outside of, you know, maybe giving their corporate parents, a little bit more money, a lifeline in a turbulent time? Is there anything that positive that we can take away from these kind of partnerships?

JUDD LEGUM: I don't view it particularly positively, as you might have gleaned by now. You know, I do think that when. When these when data, you know, if you kind of abstract it a bit more and you look at if you kind of lump, you know, group this in with polling and other forms essentially of gauging public opinion which is, which is what it's doing, I do think that there are positive ways in which that information can be used to inform the news, whether or not you're necessarily leading with that data itself. But, you know, in many cases, we have very popular policies that are sort of viewed as fringe policies because public opinion is ignored, to a certain extent. So, to the extent that it might be able to gain insight on, say, you know, if you look, I'm just thinking, if you look at coverage of this proposed billionaires tax in California, the coverage is relatively negative. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor, is opposed to it. You get a lot of coverage about billionaires leaving the state, the impact on economic growth. I suspect it will be quite a popular initiative. And that's why people are so concerned about it. So, polling can obviously give you some of that insight. Could Kalshi give you that insight? Maybe it could. You know, maybe if these markets got big enough and, you know, a cross-section of people were using them, you could get that kind of insight. So, I think that's where I sort of see, I do think there are positive ways in which public opinion can inform news and to a certain extent, Kalshi is that. The issue with it now is that it is structured so that the, the, the loudest voices are the ones with the most money. So, I think it could also, you know, can kind of have a distorting effect, but maybe there's some way they could figure out to you kind of control for that or, or at least give you, you know, different metrics to, to get insight on that. Like maybe we could know how much money is on a particular position, but also, well, how many individual investors are on a particular position?

MATT JORDAN: Yeah. As you were saying that they're talking about public opinion and you were talking before about how this is kind of cedes things to a kind of financial logic, right? That where public opinion is not supposed to be something that you need to invest in to have. Right? And, you know, usually it works the other way when a company's trying to get your opinion through a poll, they often pay you. I mean, Nielsen is paying people now, you know, a lot of good polling have to because otherwise nobody picks up the phone. So, this idea that it's only the people that are willing to put their money in this are the ones that we are taking seriously because of whatever is rational agent, you know, theory or whatever they're using to make these seem more important. But there seems like fundamentally, in a democracy, you can have opinions and public opinion without being willing to invest it. And in fact, part of the when democracy functions well is when we're willing to change her opinion after hearing another side to an argument or rethinking an argument. I wondered to what extent this is, again, another way in which the world is being financialized, and how that will have a negative impact on our attempt to deliberate.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah, and I think it's particularly problematic in the current context where you have severe wealth inequality. So, you have a certain percentage, I would say likely, fairly strong majority of the country is essentially financially locked out of these markets because they just don't have the money, disposable income to make any sort of significant investment, just like there's a certain percentage, you know, who are locked out of the stock market. And I think that the difference, you know, the big difference here, you know, I think to the extent that it is, you know, that there's, you know, that the games aren't being fixed and things like that, a sports market, I can understand and kind of get behind the idea that, yeah, the amount of money, you know, money is going to reflect kind of the best, the best knowledge that we have. But that's because the game itself is the end of the equation, meaning, you know, if this, the Lions play the Chiefs, the, the, the impact of that effectively stops at the end of the game. It's a win or loss and that's it. There's no greater societal impact. With politics, the downstream effects do not end on Election Day. They keep going. So, there's lots of reasons why you might want to sort of tilt the scales towards one or the other that go beyond simply your sort of best understanding of what you think the outcome will be.

MATT JORDAN: And in polling, they're very serious about this, they try and get a representative sample. They call until they do get a representative sample. But these things seems like it's here's the opinion or the position that, I don't know, 20 tech-bros with a huge risk, you know, incentive or risk acceptance, are willing to put a stake on. Right? That's a very different conception of public opinion and a very narrow one in relation to it. This, who are these hyper online people who are willing to put money on, on this as a but they're being treated by the news as if they are the same as scientifically conducted polls.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah, and what's worth noting is even the people who were the best at this, who are the most successful people in that kind of sort of venture capital, sort of tech-bro world, they are wrong most of the time. Right? Like the successful ones are right one out of every ten investments. And that's how they make a lot of money, right? They don't make a lot of money by being right all the time. And so the idea I think they kind of view themselves and these systems are set up on the idea that these folks, people with lots of money who are willing to put it on the line, are the people who have the best, you know, conception of what the future is, is, I think, kind of the self-perception, but it's not it's not the reality. And particularly there's just because I think it's there's also like a generalization problem that even if they did, maybe, if maybe, maybe that group of people would have the most accurate views of, well, what's the state of, you know, the latest AI models going to be by the end of the year, or what are the capabilities of ChatGPT going to be by December? But just because you have that kind of expertise in one subject area doesn't necessarily mean that you have that expertise in politics, or you have that expertise in some other area.

MATT JORDAN: Well, Judd, thanks so much for opening up a place for us to think about this together and for, discussing this. I think you're right that this is going to be, increasingly something to pay attention to. So, thanks again for being with us.

JUDD LEGUM: Thanks for having me.

MATT JORDAN: Cory, there's so much for us to think about here. And, and I find myself percolating a little bit here, trying to get my hands around what this new phenomenon means. What are some of your thoughts?

CORY BARKER: What's interesting, I thought I come away with this with two primary takeaways. One of which is you can look at this as a further, you know, sort of degradation of the American corporate news ecosystem, especially in places like cable television. Right? And thinking about how the CNNs and the CNBC's of the world are just desperate for something. Right? Whether that's, financial lifeline or a new gimmick to potentially convince people to tune in or come back after having not watch for a while and thinking about all the potential negative ways that this could impact coverage. And then, on the other hand, you know, I thought Judd did a really great job of underlining how small, relatively speaking, these markets are and how vague it is right now as far as how they're really going to be integrated into the news coverage in such a way beyond like putting the graph on the screen as far as real time, like betting data or whatever. So, I think I have a tendency to look at this as like, well, here's another example of a really negative picture of what's happening in news. But we could look back on this and even like six months and think about it as just sort of a failed experiment in an era of a lot of different failed experiments by corporate news organizations that are trying to figure out anything to get people to pay attention. What about you?

MATT JORDAN: I’m increasingly convinced that the, you know, the next big issue that we're all going to have to deal with this society is the emergence of fraud as just a category of speech that is allowed. And this is a place where it's ripe for fraud, you know, it's a ripe for market manipulation. It's ripe for manipulation of the media. It's ripe for setting agendas, by bad faith actors, all of these things. And the other part of that is that it strikes me that the thirst of the new news organizations for something that will work, it also reflects their inability to use or exercise news judgment. I mean, we always talk about news judgment, which is when editors say, let's do this story or this is an important one. They're ceding that to an outside external force, and they're allowing themselves to be manipulated in that same way. So, I think that the fact that news organizations are so kind of cowed that I'm not going to decide what we're going to cover, we're just going to cover this thing because the prediction market covers it. That, to me, is a symptom of their own insecurity in our media ecosystem as well.

CORY BARKRE: Yeah. And part of a longer line, even in recent history of being sort of beholden to what people are talking about on Twitter. Right, or what polling data discusses in the relationship to an election season as we talked about so much in this episode. Yeah. And this is at a time where we also have, as we discussed, so many different calls within the news industry and, you know, from observers and analysts that there's a need for or some way to, to rebuild trust to, to rebuild sort of editorial quality in such a way that the audience feels like they are getting a quality view of the world well reported, you know, stories and things like that. And so, we we're continuing to see that ceding of editorial judgment and authority at a time when they're also, you know, trying to reinstall that level of like public confidence at least.

MATT JORDAN: Yeah, I would say that these two things are at odds with the times.

CORY BARKER: Nice.

MATT JORDAN: That’s it for this episode of News Over Noise. Our guest was Judd Legum, founder and editor of Popular Information. To learn more, visit news-over-noise.org. I’m Matt Jordan.

CORY BARKER: And I’m Cory Barker.

MATT JORDAN: Until next time, stay well and well-informed. News Over Noise is produced by the Penn State Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and WPSU. This program has been funded by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost of Penn State, and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

CORY BARKER: Scroll through a prediction market and it looks a lot like a financial news dashboard: outcomes listed, prices moving, a clock counting down. At first, the questions seem familiar: sports outcomes, pop-culture moments, offhand predictions that feel more like entertainment than analysis. Then one market stops you. It asks whether a famine will be declared in Gaza. Same interface. Same mechanics. But suddenly it’s clear what’s being traded: human suffering. With people positioned to profit from mass starvation. This is, unfortunately, a real example from the prediction market platform Kalshi. And it helps explain why prediction markets raise serious ethical questions — especially as they become increasingly intertwined with news coverage. Prediction markets themselves aren’t new. What is new is their growing role in the news media. CNN and CNBC have both entered partnerships with Kalshi to integrate prediction market data into their reporting. CNN’s deal is already in place. CNBC’s begins in 2026. Partnerships like these will put betting odds directly into mainstream news. Supporters argue prediction markets are efficient tools; a way to aggregate information or forecast outcomes more accurately than polls or pundits. But critics warn that when journalism starts borrowing the logic of gambling, something fundamental changes. Events stop being reported for their meaning and consequences and start being framed in terms of odds, momentum, and payouts. The future becomes something to speculate on, not something to understand.

MATT JORDAN: There’s a real concern that when these market shifts are amplified by major news outlets, they could be mistaken for genuine signals about real-world events, shaping not only how the news is reported, but potentially influencing the outcomes themselves.

That raises a serious question: when journalism starts adopting the logic of betting markets, what does that mean for accountability, ethics, and a free press? To help us unpack that, we’re talking with Judd Legum, founder and editor of Popular Information. Judd has been closely examining the growing influence of prediction markets on news coverage, and what this “casino-fication” of information could mean for public trust, democratic decision-making, and the future of a free press. Judd, welcome. Welcome to News Over Noise.

JUDD LEGUM: Thanks for having me.

MATT JORDAN: So, tell us a little bit about what prediction markets are and where they came from.

JUDD LEGUM: I mean, I think obviously the idea of betting on some future event has been around for, for quite some, quite some time. But these are really risen to prominence in recent years as the legalities of them were resolved. There were a number of players. Polymarket probably was the most prominent one that were ought to began offering these kinds of markets on all sorts of things politics, sports, what have you. But they were operating, really under the assumption that it was illegal in the United States. They weren't technically available in the United States, although many people got around that restriction through VPNs and other technical means. But then what happened was that Kalshi effectively sued the federal government, saying that what they were doing was legal. This was around the 2024 election, and their ability to have them offer a market on that, and that was eventually, decided in their favor, which effectively legalized, for Kalshi, the market under the auspices of the CFTC. And since then, they've operated in, you know, effectively, the federal government has condoned these this practice, the ability to set up a market over almost anything. And, since then, the popularity has exploded.

MATT JORDAN: They were being, as you said, both investigated by the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission. And also, there was some congressional pushback in 2023 about this, but that oversight to stopped. What happened? What stopped the oversight and the idea that being able to bet on anything, anywhere, at any time would be a bad thing?

JUDD LEGUM: Well, I think there's two things. There was this very specific legal dispute about the politics betting and the betting on the 2024 election. So, eventually a federal court ruled in favor of Kalshi that this wasn't illegal. What they're arguing is that this isn't actually gambling. This is a market like any other market that might be available for a stock or some other asset. So, that was resolved. That meant that they could offer these markets on, you know, the presidential election and presumably on for other elections. They're probably less interested in, you know, betting on some random congressional election. But you could do it under that precedent. Then the Trump administration came in. You could sort of fight it on each substantive category. You could have decided, like, okay, well, maybe it's okay with politics, but when you're moving into sports or when you're moving into all of the other, like random things that are now available to bet on, we're going to argue that it's illegal there and we're going to fight you on it. That has not been what they've done. What they've done is said, okay, we are going to allow this. You kind of give us a heads up when you offer a any kind of new market, and we'll let you know if we see any problems with it. And, you know, that's been the route that the Trump administration has taken. That's allowed them Kalshi to form all sorts of partnerships with, you know, different prominent organizations and to really raise their profile and raise the awareness of the platform itself, which, you know, in turn has raised the usage.

CORY BARKER: We're going to talk about the integration of the call platform into CNN and CNBC in a moment. But I wanted to ask you, as we're on this background point, how do you think we and our audience can best understand the integration of this type of market into news coverage? Right? Do you see this as an extension of kind of post 538, like, obsession with data and pulling data in particular? Is it really, you know, a byproduct of just the increased accessibility of sports gambling on our phones? Is it a combination of those things? Is it something else? Like, how else can we think about the emergence of this as something that news companies are using in the reporting and then obviously, like, actually partnering with to integrate into their product?

JUDD LEGUM: I mean, to me, it comes down to fundamentally what is news and why are people interested in it. And I think our kind of traditional understanding of news, and this has never been the full driving force behind it, but kind of at its most idealized, in its most idealized version, people are of this world. They care about their neighborhood, their country, the international community, because they are a part of it. They want to understand it. And so, news seeks to fill that need. It's going to educate people about the world because they're interested in it. And maybe when they find out about it, they don't like what's going on and they're going to engage in some way. Maybe that's just voting for a particular candidate, maybe that's something more, or maybe they're going to attend a protest. Maybe they're going to start an activist group. Who knows? That's one version. But I think the other version, and this has always been a part of it, is news is entertainment. We're not really going to do anything with this information. It's not really important to me as a person in some way, but I'm watching it the same way. I'm watching, you know, The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. I'm watching it as entertainment. There's interesting things going on, and I'm kind of interested in the characters and what's happening. And I think when you make when you turn everything into a betting opportunity, I think you're elevating that part of news. Not that it, news, was pure before this and then it corrupted news. I think this was always part of news from the very beginning, this was always part of news. And there's a there's a rich tradition of kind of tabloid news and news as entertainment but I think it takes it to another level because it essentially abstracts every news story and it makes it into just another way to potentially make some money. No matter, no matter what's at stake. You know, I think famously, you know, Kalshi was criticized because it had a betting market on whether what was happening in Gaza would be deemed a genocide or not. And I think obviously that's a very extreme version, but that's what's going on in all these, you know, when it's applied to news in for all these different stories.

MATT JORDAN: So, you know, one of my favorite movies about the news is Sidney Lumet's Network, right. And one of the characters that they have in the exaggerated cartoon version of the news, there's the NewsHour. One of the characters is Sibyl the Soothsayer. Should news be doing prognostication and prediction anyway?

JUDD LEGUM: Well, I've long been a critic of that version of news which has been on the rise even before Kalshi and Polymarket and others sort of rose to prominence. And ultimately, you know, if you just look at where this comes up the most, which is presidential elections. And, if you think about there's a limited amount of time that any platform, any outlet has to cover the election. Now, on the first Tuesday in November, or hopefully at least shortly thereafter, you will know who is president and who lost. But so much of that news hole, you know, is the industry term is filled up with people crunching the numbers, figuring out, trying to predict what happens that day, but actually politics is a dynamic process, meaning the coverage itself and people's understanding. It changes that people's views and people's opinions. So, even if you were able to and of course, polling is not this exact, but even if you were able to determine with 100% accuracy exactly what the outcome of the election were to be, if it was held on, say, August 1st, 2024, instead of in November, it would not tell you the outcome because there's those months and people are human beings who are changing their minds based on information that they are collecting. So, there really isn't much value to this. I think it's become popular for a couple of reasons. One is, it's a great way to avoid seeming biased in one way or another. When you're talking about the data, there's an objectivity to it. We're not talking about what the impact of this policy would be, or that policy, and having to make kind of embed some value judgments, or at least open us up to being seen as biased in that way. We're just talking about the numbers. Secondly, there's always a lot of angst within the public about what is going to happen on both sides. So, you're playing into that angst because people want assurances. They want to resolve that uncertainty. The uncertainty cannot be resolved, but it these, you know, the graphs that are produced, the trends, the percentages. You can look on Kalshi, you can say, okay, well who's going to win in 2028? Okay. Well, looks like, you know, this person has a 34% chance. Okay. Well, I know that that person has a 34% chance now. So now I have less uncertainty about, and there's only a 1% chance that this person will win. Okay, so now I think I have less uncertainty about it. You don't really, but you think you do.

CORY BARKER: When we talk about these particular agreements or integrations with CNN and CNBC and Kalshi, what does that look like? What type of partnerships are we seeing? How is this actually influencing or plan to influence or shape the coverage that we see on these cable channels, on their websites, in their various digital platforms?

JUDD LEGUM: I think, you know, these are relatively new agreements. So, I think to a certain extent, we're still learning what that will look like. Already we have seen as issues are being discussed, they'll display the betting odds on a particular issue. What might happen. You know, is Trump going to invade Venezuela. You know. Well, again. And we'll see the odds of that happening. And I also think because they have this arrangement and we're not sure about the financial particulars, it does create conflicts because it incentivizes certain kinds of coverage. Meaning if these deals and this is speculative now, but if these deals involve, say, these networks getting a cut of increased betting activity around certain news events, it could incentivize covering them in ways that might drive more betting. And that is a substantively different kind of coverage than if you were just trying to inform people to the maximum extent possible.

MATT JORDAN: You know, it's interesting these they're classified as derivative markets technically. So, insider trading is legal or legit, I guess I should say. Instead of buying a commodity or buying a concept, what is there to protect consumers who happen to engage with these platforms from fraud? You know, there's a lot of speculation out there that Karoline Leavitt stopped her press conference short the other day because there was a prediction market position on 65 minutes. And so, this kind of created a buzz around it. So, what's to keep actors like that? Who could control these things from putting a position down and then making sure they win?

JUDD LEGUM: I think the answer is very little. Now these markets, including Kalshi, they do have rules that would prevent somebody like Karoline Leavitt or people who are talking to her or know you know her from using that information to bet in that market. You know, and they actually have a list, you know, you can you can go on their website and if you dig around enough, you can find the list of interested parties who are prohibited in each market. The problem is one that's not a legal restriction. And secondly, what is the enforcement mechanism? And, as far as we know, I mean, these there's no, you know, Kalshi doesn't have the ability to be inside the white House and figure out who Karoline Leavitt’s talking to. You know, that's just not going to happen. You know, there are sort of general restrictions against fraud. Maybe you could argue that if there was some sort of conspiracy to, you know, stop a press conference earlier and there was somebody betting based on that information, that that would be sort of generalized fraud. But unlike the FCC, which has very robust enforcement mechanisms and has a whole history of doing this, the CFTC is much more limited in their investigatory capacity and has no experience whatsoever investigating markets like this. You know, these kind of prediction markets. As you mentioned, it's traditionally, you know, derivative markets for commodities. And the whole point is, hey, you know, I know that, you know, I'm a I'm a oil company. I know that there's going to be this increase in, or I'm that maybe I'm a company that buys oil. So, I know and I know we're going to need a lot next year, so there's going to be this increase in demand. So, I'm going to hedge against any potential increase. I'm going to drive up by my increased demand by buying these oil futures. That's the whole that's what's seen as a appropriate use of the market. So, they're not used to looking at, people using inside information. Certainly not used to these prediction markets. So, there's, there's very little protection to the for the consumer. And as these things get more and more specific, more and more random, where it's literally just one person deciding to say a word or to do a thing, it becomes much more, you know, subject to abuse.

CORY BARKER: You hit on this a little bit, but what do you feel like these types of partnerships or integrations say about how corporate news companies view their audience and view their overall mission?

JUDD LEGUM: Well, I think that they are increasingly desperate to avoid any allegation of bias, either by their audience, but especially from the current administration. And I think they view this kind of coverage as sort of a very attractive, kind of sexy way to cover the news that doesn't have those issues. In fact, there's a lot of people associated with the Trump administration, Donald Trump Jr. and others who are integrated within this crowd, the boards of these of these companies or advisory boards. So that's what I think it's really about. They're looking for ways to do this. And I think they're also looking for new ways to bring in revenue, you know, and increasingly, no matter what industry, you're talking about, gambling is seen as the best way to, you know, whether it's sports or, or the media or anything else, gambling is seen as the way to increase revenues. And, you know, I think that's the direction a lot of these media organizations are going.

MATT JORDAN: It's interesting that we talked with somebody earlier about, you know, prop betting and sports gambling and ESPN’s, you know, kind of integration with FanDuel, etc. And one of the positions, he said was that it's not really about them getting a cut of the house's take because the house always wins. It's that people will stay tuned. Right. So, do you foresee if that's the case? You know, because if the game's a blowout, but you have a parlay on Saquon Barkley, you know, getting six touchdowns or whatever, you'll watch till the end. Do you see that logic being operating and operating the news. And would you expect them to time the, you know, announcement of certain things that might be hedged in Polymarket or Kalshi till the end of the program?

JUDD LEGUM: I think that's certainly you know it's something you know, frankly I haven't hadn't thought about it that much until you brought it up. But I think I've certainly another benefit. Meaning that if you're if you if you now bet on, you know, this news event, if you're betting on, you know, is Donald Trump going to buy Greenland or invade Greenland or whatever, whatever the plan is to get Greenland, you're going to be tuned in and want to see where which way the winds are blowing. You know, maybe I need to cash out my position. Maybe I need to increase my position. You're going to be very engaged in that news article or that news story from, economic perspective. So, I think, you know, finding ways to like, engage people in that way. Certainly, that's I think one of the reasons that that that the sports leagues, have embraced this after, you know, many years my whole, you know. Basically my, my whole childhood and most of my adulthood, you know, the, the, the leagues were adamantly against gambling and, you know, wouldn't have teams in Las Vegas and, you know, were very keen, not extremely hard on anyone who was even, you know, remotely involved in gambling. You know, I, you know, I think they see it both as a direct revenue source because they have deals with them, but also just engaging people because they know if you've got even $20 on the game, you're going to watch probably that whole game, at least until your bet resolves. And so, yeah, I could see that happening in the news. I think these political markets right now are probably too small to, you know, to show up in the, in the Nielsen's ratings would be my guess. But yeah, we're just right at the very beginning of this. I mean, this was in 2024. We didn't even know if this was legal. You know, so people were engaged on it, but they were engaged. You know, it was only people who were ready to be on the very cutting edge of this and take a lot of legal risks just by being engaged in it. You know, this 2025 was really the first full year. So, we'll have really the first election, major election that where this is this kind of betting or markets, as I guess they would prefer you call it is available would be would be this year.

CORY BARKER: And I think it's interesting has we're framing this in relationship to the to the integration of sports betting into sports programing in in broadcasts. Naturally we all know that live sports broadcasts have been one of the, if not the only thing that's kind of survived the degradation of, you know, cord cutting and people, you know, transitioning to streaming and all of those related things. And so, the legalization of sports betting only kind of further catalyzed or solidified live sports broadcasting as like a go to thing in the television ecosystem. I think what's interesting about this move is that there's millions of people, especially younger people, who might be interested in this type of markets or betting whatever, you know, we're talking about here, that don't have that built in sort of routine of muscle of like ever watching CNN or CNBC on television. Right? It'll be interesting, and I don't know if you have any thoughts about how these companies may try to use markets like Kashi in Polymarket as a way to try to get people to actually watch their television programing or, you know, using that as some sort of carrot to integrate what people are seeing on their phones and what could then be on, you know, the television product, because it feels like that's going to be a hard hurdle for them to cross. Whereas with sports audiences, the audience was already massive and already there. To some extent, betting just made it easier or different, you know?

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah, I think it's going to be a challenge for sure. And one of the big differences I see is that in a sports betting context, the way to know what's happening is to watch it live. That's how you're going to get the best, newest information. You know, if you want to find out who's injured, you know, before they even announce it, if you're watching the game, you can see the person fall to the ground, maybe, you know, maybe you can figure out if they're injured. In news, it's very rarely the case these days that the news is breaking. First, on television, you can almost always get it online. So, I think anyone who's really seriously engaged in these markets is not going to be relying on television news to kind of adjust their position. So, I think it's maybe one of those things that kind of sounds good, I don't know. But I don't know how well, how well thought out it is. I see I see the benefit for sure, for a company like Kalshi and others who I'm sure are looking to make similar deals as it just raises you don't, you know, doesn't or all they want to do, they just need people to know that they're around and that they exist and that this kind of market is available because it's so new. They don't need people to stick around to the CNN and or CNBC or anything like that.

MATT JORDAN: So, you know, these things claim to be better prognostic tools than polls. You know, there's been already been a lot of critique of polls as a driver of the news cycles, right? That polling companies give the news something to talk about in a way, to a horse, horse race, the whole thing so that people bet on it or, and, you know, pick the winner. And it has a kind of a deleterious impact on democracy and deliberation about, you know, a third-party candidates, women candidates, people who aren't have name recognition, etc. The… those interested that the CEO said Kalshi is replacing debate subjectivity in talk with markets, accuracy and truth. Is this a positive development for deliberative democracy to have debate and subjectivity replaced with markets, accuracy and truth?

JUDD LEGUM: I think even if that were true, it would not be positive. But I think the in addition to not being positive, I think it's also not true. The problem is, is that these markets are incredibly subject to manipulation. I think particularly in the political context. I think the, the latest data I saw for 2025 was that Kalshi was something like $50 billion as far as the, you know, the scope of how much money is being bet lot. That's a lot of money. $50 million is a lot of money. But if you look at something like the stock market, I think it's close to $650 billion every day that's traded in stocks. So, you have essentially a tiny market. And of course, that's everything all put together. If you look at any individual market, it's going to be much smaller. You know, I bet the presidential betting markets are probably relatively robust, a relatively large section, although most of that is going to be in sports. But, you know, if you're just looking at the presidential one, if you go down to a Senate race or congressional race, it's going to be even smaller, and someone can very easily for probably well under, but, you know, at least no more than a couple of million dollars would it take to spike one of these markets, spike one candidate over another. And I think that's where the CNN integration and integration with news organizations becomes particularly problematic because it sets up kind of this reinforcing cycle where you can get somebody with, with some cash, a couple of million dollars, you can pump it into a candidate that will drive positive coverage. Essentially, hey, this candidate has momentum. You know, maybe they'll talk about, oh, well, my why might they have this momentum? Well, they're delivering a really effective message on Social Security or whatever it happens to be. Then people know about that message that, you know, then it becomes more effective. The market goes up more. There's another story really just leaves it open for all sorts of kind of dirty tricks, behind the scenes stuff to manipulate things. And, and I don't think people have begun to really consider that. And if you think about the people who are most enthusiastic about these markets, people in, you know, the, the AI space, the crypto space, they're also some of the biggest players in politics these days. So, I don't think it's out of the. Yeah, I don't think it's so speculative that this could happen, you know, in 2020 for the crypto industry. The crypto super PAC was the biggest one. And I think we're going to expect the new AI super PAC to be the biggest spender in 2026 and 2028. So, in the context of two, three, $500 million super PACs, you know, 1 million or 2 to, to spike a market, I don't think and create a positive story for a favored candidate. I don't think it's out of the question. And you wouldn't even have to say, hey, this was manipulation. You could just say, hey, I believe in this guy. I believe he's running a good campaign, and I think he's going to win. That's why I put $1 million down on candidate X.

MATT JORDAN: Yeah, it's an agenda setting tool as well in terms of media.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah.

MATT JORDAN: And so, I was looking at Peter Thiel has put, you know, 70 million into Kalshi. He also has a stake in Polymarket. Obviously, he's not a neutral player in this. So, I'm wondering if this that the I don't know, I'll just categorize them as anti-democracy forces. Might these prediction markets be forcing multipliers for bad faith messaging? And the people who are trying to manipulate the news?

JUDD LEGUM: Well… I think the way I look at it is it's a mechanism. I think there's a lot of problems with polling. Let me start there. Methodological problems. And then some of the problems I was talking about before that, it's a snapshot in time. But one thing you can say about polling is every person basically counts the same. You know, there's some weighting and things like that. But for the most part, you called the person, they tell you your opinion, and then that becomes what sets the narrative. This is really an effort by people like Peter Thiel and others to replace the person with the dollar, you know? And so, it's another way in which money is setting the agenda and money determines who has the best chance of winning. And I just don't really buy in the context of a presidential election where the basically the most powerful institution on earth, the United States federal government, is at stake, that, you know, markets of these size could even begin to be seen as objective rather than sort of tools to drive what the result might be. And so, I think it's very dangerous to the extent that people believe that these are more accurate, especially when there's absolutely no track record in which to base that on. You know, it's like, what are they basing that on? There's nothing. Like we don't have anything to base that on. Maybe one election at best, where we believe that where most people believed and it was of questionable legality for most of the election.

CORY BARKER: One of the things I keep thinking about during our conversation and in my research for this episode, is the increased legalization of sports gambling, gambling in general on our phones. The legalization of these markets through Kalshi and Polymarket are, themselves, massive stories should be massive beats that newsrooms are covering across the world., that the degree of money floating in and out of here, as we've talked about the increased number of people who are using these things, should be beats themselves. And yet we have companies instead, sort of further integrating themselves with whether it's, you know, Sportsbook or Kalshi or Polymarket. So, I mean, how are audiences, if at all, supposed to trust that these news organizations are going to cover what is a massive story topic, potential beat in and of itself when they're even further, deeply integrated with it, without there just being increased skepticism or apathy? Confusion? It just seems like on one hand, we have news organizations talk about wanting to build back trust or whatever and then makes decisions like this. Doesn't that just sort of further create confusion and, and, and distrust or at least skepticism of how news organizations are operating?

JUDD LEGUM: I think that's right. You know, and I think if you if you look at that sports comparison, you know, we kind of have a little bit of an insight into how this plays out and what we've seen, even though kind of the full or near full legalization of sports betting is relatively new, as we've seen, numerous high profile betting scandals. Just this week you had a college basketball scandal with dozens of players, and I think it was something like close to 20 schools, 17 schools. I can't remember the exact number who are involved in in point shaving and other kinds of activities to reward bettors. I think players were being offered $10,000-$30,000 to, you know, I guess reduced the score or how, however, they were trying to tilt the bets when this stuff is covered. You know, if you look at the coverage of ESPN, there's never really a connection. You know, they'll cover the story, but there's never really a connection to this seems to be a product of the fact that these you can now bet on anything, anytime, anywhere, on any game. You know, I think it would be a lot more difficult to, you know, make money off of these obscure college basketball games. If the only place you could make a bet was Las Vegas, now you can make a bet from your phone from almost any state. So, if you look about, you know, how is that going to be? How is that going to translate over into the political realm? You know, you can have politicians being paid to drop out. You know, if somebody can make $10 million, if a candidate X wins, why not offer candidate Y $5 million to drop out of that race? Or why not offer… you know, obviously there's a long history of opposition research and, you know, the impact of, negative story on a candidate. Why not offer a news organization $1 million to run a story, whether it's true or not, that's negative about a candidate. And then while people are figuring it out and the market moves cash out there. So, I think there's all sorts of sort of corollaries to what we've seen in the sports world that could emerge in the political world, especially as more and more money is at stake. I mean, I think right now the reality is there's probably not enough money to be made in these markets that that would be worth it. But, you know, if the presidential market itself is worth $5 billion or $10 billion, well, then there's going to be huge incentives for this stuff, even for stories that could move the percentages by a percent or two. You don't necessarily need to fix the election. All you need to do is change the narrative for a day or a couple of days and use that to profit.

MATT JORDAN: Yeah. One of the things that, people have long talked about in relation to the news is in the way that it's broadcast, right, that you have a news anchor reading stories about puppies at the 4-H shows, right next to a story about a mass murderer, and usually without skipping a beat. Right. So, there's a kind of a context collapse that happens. This seems to me something that would cause that to happen at a much larger degree. Right? That you can bet, right now, on whether there's mass starvation in Gaza, whether Israel will start a nuclear war with Iran. You can bet on whether, the ICE agent who killed Renee Nicole Good will be charged by the end of March. What the percentage of chance is or [inaudible], all of these things that are gamified and then collapsed into this, you know, this ticker tape and, what starts to bleed away, it seems to me, is context, narrative discussion of the stakes of these things. Right? So, when we're not talking about the stakes, I wonder what service the news is doing for a deliberative democracy when all we're talking about is the odds and the end result.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah, I, I agree with that to a large extent. You know, if you're talking about somebody, a mother, who was, you know, killed by, by an ICE agent, I don't think that that should be a moneymaking opportunity for someone, especially you know, in the context of what will happen to the person who killed her. And when you when you do that, and you essentially make it indistinguishable on the platform from, you know, whether, you know, an announcer uses their catchphrase during the Lakers’ game tonight, you do trivialize it. And if that's the, I think if that's the lens in which the public largely views news events, it's not a neutral lens. It is in service of a particular ideology. That's… that essentially is almost exclusively market driven, that wherever the most money, you know, sort of kind of the, the corollary to might is right where the might is whoever has the most dollars.

MATT JORDAN: Yeah.

CORY BARKER: I feel like I know the answer to this, but do you have any sort of positive thoughts about this potential integration into the news product? Is there any world or even in in a small corner of how news is, is produced and distributed, that the integration with these markets is useful for the public or, you know, useful for journalists outside of, you know, maybe giving their corporate parents, a little bit more money, a lifeline in a turbulent time? Is there anything that positive that we can take away from these kind of partnerships?

JUDD LEGUM: I don't view it particularly positively, as you might have gleaned by now. You know, I do think that when. When these when data, you know, if you kind of abstract it a bit more and you look at if you kind of lump, you know, group this in with polling and other forms essentially of gauging public opinion which is, which is what it's doing, I do think that there are positive ways in which that information can be used to inform the news, whether or not you're necessarily leading with that data itself. But, you know, in many cases, we have very popular policies that are sort of viewed as fringe policies because public opinion is ignored, to a certain extent. So, to the extent that it might be able to gain insight on, say, you know, if you look, I'm just thinking, if you look at coverage of this proposed billionaires tax in California, the coverage is relatively negative. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor, is opposed to it. You get a lot of coverage about billionaires leaving the state, the impact on economic growth. I suspect it will be quite a popular initiative. And that's why people are so concerned about it. So, polling can obviously give you some of that insight. Could Kalshi give you that insight? Maybe it could. You know, maybe if these markets got big enough and, you know, a cross-section of people were using them, you could get that kind of insight. So, I think that's where I sort of see, I do think there are positive ways in which public opinion can inform news and to a certain extent, Kalshi is that. The issue with it now is that it is structured so that the, the, the loudest voices are the ones with the most money. So, I think it could also, you know, can kind of have a distorting effect, but maybe there's some way they could figure out to you kind of control for that or, or at least give you, you know, different metrics to, to get insight on that. Like maybe we could know how much money is on a particular position, but also, well, how many individual investors are on a particular position?

MATT JORDAN: Yeah. As you were saying that they're talking about public opinion and you were talking before about how this is kind of cedes things to a kind of financial logic, right? That where public opinion is not supposed to be something that you need to invest in to have. Right? And, you know, usually it works the other way when a company's trying to get your opinion through a poll, they often pay you. I mean, Nielsen is paying people now, you know, a lot of good polling have to because otherwise nobody picks up the phone. So, this idea that it's only the people that are willing to put their money in this are the ones that we are taking seriously because of whatever is rational agent, you know, theory or whatever they're using to make these seem more important. But there seems like fundamentally, in a democracy, you can have opinions and public opinion without being willing to invest it. And in fact, part of the when democracy functions well is when we're willing to change her opinion after hearing another side to an argument or rethinking an argument. I wondered to what extent this is, again, another way in which the world is being financialized, and how that will have a negative impact on our attempt to deliberate.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah, and I think it's particularly problematic in the current context where you have severe wealth inequality. So, you have a certain percentage, I would say likely, fairly strong majority of the country is essentially financially locked out of these markets because they just don't have the money, disposable income to make any sort of significant investment, just like there's a certain percentage, you know, who are locked out of the stock market. And I think that the difference, you know, the big difference here, you know, I think to the extent that it is, you know, that there's, you know, that the games aren't being fixed and things like that, a sports market, I can understand and kind of get behind the idea that, yeah, the amount of money, you know, money is going to reflect kind of the best, the best knowledge that we have. But that's because the game itself is the end of the equation, meaning, you know, if this, the Lions play the Chiefs, the, the, the impact of that effectively stops at the end of the game. It's a win or loss and that's it. There's no greater societal impact. With politics, the downstream effects do not end on Election Day. They keep going. So, there's lots of reasons why you might want to sort of tilt the scales towards one or the other that go beyond simply your sort of best understanding of what you think the outcome will be.

MATT JORDAN: And in polling, they're very serious about this, they try and get a representative sample. They call until they do get a representative sample. But these things seems like it's here's the opinion or the position that, I don't know, 20 tech-bros with a huge risk, you know, incentive or risk acceptance, are willing to put a stake on. Right? That's a very different conception of public opinion and a very narrow one in relation to it. This, who are these hyper online people who are willing to put money on, on this as a but they're being treated by the news as if they are the same as scientifically conducted polls.

JUDD LEGUM: Yeah, and what's worth noting is even the people who were the best at this, who are the most successful people in that kind of sort of venture capital, sort of tech-bro world, they are wrong most of the time. Right? Like the successful ones are right one out of every ten investments. And that's how they make a lot of money, right? They don't make a lot of money by being right all the time. And so the idea I think they kind of view themselves and these systems are set up on the idea that these folks, people with lots of money who are willing to put it on the line, are the people who have the best, you know, conception of what the future is, is, I think, kind of the self-perception, but it's not it's not the reality. And particularly there's just because I think it's there's also like a generalization problem that even if they did, maybe, if maybe, maybe that group of people would have the most accurate views of, well, what's the state of, you know, the latest AI models going to be by the end of the year, or what are the capabilities of ChatGPT going to be by December? But just because you have that kind of expertise in one subject area doesn't necessarily mean that you have that expertise in politics, or you have that expertise in some other area.

MATT JORDAN: Well, Judd, thanks so much for opening up a place for us to think about this together and for, discussing this. I think you're right that this is going to be, increasingly something to pay attention to. So, thanks again for being with us.

JUDD LEGUM: Thanks for having me.

MATT JORDAN: Cory, there's so much for us to think about here. And, and I find myself percolating a little bit here, trying to get my hands around what this new phenomenon means. What are some of your thoughts?

CORY BARKER: What's interesting, I thought I come away with this with two primary takeaways. One of which is you can look at this as a further, you know, sort of degradation of the American corporate news ecosystem, especially in places like cable television. Right? And thinking about how the CNNs and the CNBC's of the world are just desperate for something. Right? Whether that's, financial lifeline or a new gimmick to potentially convince people to tune in or come back after having not watch for a while and thinking about all the potential negative ways that this could impact coverage. And then, on the other hand, you know, I thought Judd did a really great job of underlining how small, relatively speaking, these markets are and how vague it is right now as far as how they're really going to be integrated into the news coverage in such a way beyond like putting the graph on the screen as far as real time, like betting data or whatever. So, I think I have a tendency to look at this as like, well, here's another example of a really negative picture of what's happening in news. But we could look back on this and even like six months and think about it as just sort of a failed experiment in an era of a lot of different failed experiments by corporate news organizations that are trying to figure out anything to get people to pay attention. What about you?

MATT JORDAN: I’m increasingly convinced that the, you know, the next big issue that we're all going to have to deal with this society is the emergence of fraud as just a category of speech that is allowed. And this is a place where it's ripe for fraud, you know, it's a ripe for market manipulation. It's ripe for manipulation of the media. It's ripe for setting agendas, by bad faith actors, all of these things. And the other part of that is that it strikes me that the thirst of the new news organizations for something that will work, it also reflects their inability to use or exercise news judgment. I mean, we always talk about news judgment, which is when editors say, let's do this story or this is an important one. They're ceding that to an outside external force, and they're allowing themselves to be manipulated in that same way. So, I think that the fact that news organizations are so kind of cowed that I'm not going to decide what we're going to cover, we're just going to cover this thing because the prediction market covers it. That, to me, is a symptom of their own insecurity in our media ecosystem as well.

CORY BARKRE: Yeah. And part of a longer line, even in recent history of being sort of beholden to what people are talking about on Twitter. Right, or what polling data discusses in the relationship to an election season as we talked about so much in this episode. Yeah. And this is at a time where we also have, as we discussed, so many different calls within the news industry and, you know, from observers and analysts that there's a need for or some way to, to rebuild trust to, to rebuild sort of editorial quality in such a way that the audience feels like they are getting a quality view of the world well reported, you know, stories and things like that. And so, we we're continuing to see that ceding of editorial judgment and authority at a time when they're also, you know, trying to reinstall that level of like public confidence at least.

MATT JORDAN: Yeah, I would say that these two things are at odds with the times.

CORY BARKER: Nice.

MATT JORDAN: That’s it for this episode of News Over Noise. Our guest was Judd Legum, founder and editor of Popular Information. To learn more, visit news-over-noise.org. I’m Matt Jordan.

CORY BARKER: And I’m Cory Barker.

MATT JORDAN: Until next time, stay well and well-informed. News Over Noise is produced by the Penn State Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and WPSU. This program has been funded by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost of Penn State, and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative

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