I’m betting this ‘betting thing’ is a new problem for journalism

In a world where truth is the underdog, the journalists become the heroes of the story, fighting against long odds to get the story right.”

Scott Yates, creator of trust.txt

Back in J-school at NYU, I learned you need three examples to make a trend, so here are three that I saw that set my trend alarm bells ringing:

• A PR firm was found selling “guaranteed coverage” on websites built to look like regional editions of Forbes. Some of the regional Forbes editions are real licensees, some were invented, and no regular reader on earth could tell which is which.
• A network of state-level political news sites turned out to be the product of a national political operation rather than the local newsrooms they resembled.
• A threat intelligence firm documented more than 400 domains impersonating real news outlets in half a dozen countries, complete with a fabricated editor’s note claiming that ABC News had independently verified an investment scheme.

And here’s a fourth, just in case you want to be more worried about Florida: A “news” outlet with a full masthead of reporters turned out to have no reporters at all, just AI-generated faces on top of stories lifted from a real publication down the road.

Take those and layer them all on top of one story you may have missed in the fog of war: a military correspondent for the Times of Israel reported that an Iranian ballistic missile had struck an open area in Israel — no deaths, not actually huge news given everything else going on at the time.

What the reporter didn’t know was that on a prediction market called Polymarket, more than $17 million was riding on a contract asking whether an intact Iranian missile would strike Israeli soil that day. The people who had bet “no” needed the story to say the opposite of what the reporter had written.

So, gamblers told him to change it. When he said “no,” they threatened to kill him and his family.

That is a new thing in journalism, and in the world, that none of us saw coming.

My prediction about predictions and journalism

Fake news sites will determine the outcome of a bet.

I’m betting it’s already happened, and if not, that it will soon enough. (I’m only saying that as a figure of speech. I haven’t actually made that bet, or any bet ever, on any of those markets.) And even if it doesn’t happen on a domain from a defunct site, it could happen on a domain that looks like a legitimate site. That’s something that happens all the time and keeps happening.

Here is what it will look like: A prediction market contract will resolve on “credible reporting.” The evidence offered in the dispute will be an article or series of articles from one or more sites that may even use domains of past legitimate publishers, or domains that look like they are big brands, or just look really good. But it will all be AI-generated and created solely to help someone win a bet.

I don’t feel like I’m going out on a limb here. The tools are cheap or free, the incentive is enormous, and someone already tried a harder version of that when they made death threats against a reporter. That’s against the law. Making a fake news website is deplorable, but there’s not a clear law against it in a free-press world.

Journalism has always mattered, and it matters more now perhaps than ever because the nature of truth is under attack. It has been for a while by those who don’t really like messy democracy, and the attacks are now fueled with tools of previously unimaginable power. And all of that’s happening while journalists have fewer resources than ever. None of that is news to you.

In a world where truth is the underdog, the journalists become the heroes of the story, fighting against long odds to get the story right. That’s something to be celebrated and marveled at and lifted up.

But it’s time to get serious about the threats. If you don’t have a policy against journalists participating in prediction markets, you need one now.

Three things every editor-in-chief and publisher should do:

Set a prediction market policy. Bar staff from betting on any contract anywhere that has even a whiff of what a reporter is covering.

Lock down your domains. Keep renewing old ones, including those from closed or merged titles. Then publish a trust.txt file listing the domains you control.

Make your corrections easy to verify. Keep a public corrections page. If someone circulates a fake email claiming your reporter retracted a story, anyone can check the real record in seconds.

And when my prediction comes true, as I am afraid it will very soon, we will know because it will be an intrepid, human journalist who discovers it and lets the world know.

I’m betting on that, too. Figuratively.

Scott Yates is the creator of trust.txt, leads the proposed IPTC Publisher Transparency Working Group, and chairs the W3C Credible Web Community Group. He’s an adviser to Rebuild Local News and is a startup mentor and consultant working on complex problems. He was formerly a cub reporter at, among others, The Durango Herald in Colorado.