No they don't. The exist because the fairness doctrine was done away with by Reagan which means the dirtiest lying sons-of-bitches on the planet can get on "TV" and spew utter bullshit 24/7/365 - and call it "news". Opinion and newsmongering have obliterated "just the facts".

It's how you keep the human monkeys riled up.

CBS is not a news organization.

There's no journalism in US anymore. It's all just different flavors of corporate propaganda.

Whenever they start talking about polls, they always bring up Kalshi these days. Sometimes they even highlight Kalshi's predictions as if they are as legit as actual scientifically-based polls, which they are not. Prediction markets are based totally on vibes, and have no place being discussed on a legitimate news platform.

Soo, bets on a gambling system = journalism?

Doesn't compute.

"Prediction markets" is sure one hell of a marketing spin.

It's gambling. Nothing more, nothing less.

The problem is they report betting odds as probabilities that something will happen instead of what they really are: pure guesses

Doin' it for the clicks, not the truth.

CBS is not a news agency.

Calling a betting market »journalism« is quite the innovation: why investigate power, verify facts, or protect sources when you can just put odds on reality and call it data? CBS partnering with Kalshi feels less like the future of news and more like turning election night into a casino with correspondents.

I used to think gambling should be allowed from a sort of social libertarian-ish perspective. Nowadays, I would be in favor of an outright ban in all forms of gambling, betting, or any other name someone wants to give to the same activity, which includes the stock market.

It's a rigged game, and the ones who win are the ones who rig the game to begin with.

No idea how that could realistically be enforced with things like exchanging currencies, crypto trading (which can be legitimately useful if wanting to avoid dragnet financial surveillance using something like Monero or wanting to bypass payment processor oligopolies, like when Visa/MasterCard strongarmed PornHub to delete all non-verified videos as an example of an abuse of their power), scalping/trading physical goods, etc., but at the very least, all other forms of direct gambling with money can be banned in the meantime.

Fine, prediction markets are gambling. They are better gambling propositions than traditional oddsmaker books which have higher margins/house take baked into them.

Big political outcomes is a helpful prediction market service, even/because insiders can cheat by betting on the outcome. Midterm outcomes, or (4% chance) of $5000 dividend cheque by March 31 2007 are specific probabilities that reveal pure BS.

Some horrible contracts are whether a speech will include some word, or outcomes that have already been predetermined (Oscars) with insiders who know 100% betting vs the clueless. Other terrible contracts include US-Iran ceasefire status. Too ambiguous, and resolution process is prone to corruption.

Still, these markets are more useful predictors than polls, because experts are analyzing with money instead of bias.

Journalists embracing the prediction markets was called an "Op-Ed" back before the internet. Nothing new here just lots of different words arranged in a different way to tell you the same old thing.

How this is this technology related? It stocks.

As much as y'all don't want this to be accurate, sadly, it kind of is. Non-US betting markets in 2016, 2020, and 2024 all correctly called the US presidential election better than Five Thirty Eight or polls or any other formerly reliable method.