Nieman Lab.
Predictions for
Journalism, 2024.
The predictions in this series are often happy, joyful, optimistic about the coming year, bursting with all the promise and possibilities facing journalism in the next 12 months.
Allow me to be a downer just this once.
My prediction for 2024 is that there will be a major scandal involving a sports journalist and sports gambling.
The monumental growth of sports gambling since the Supreme Court effectively legalized it in 2018 brings with it a set of challenges for sports journalism — and the most pressing ethical question over the next couple of years will be codifying gambling rules.
The same way Donald Trump’s candidacy is a test for the norms and practices of American political journalists, legalized sports gambling is a test for the norms and practices of sports journalists.
It’s an area ripe for a scandal. There’s simply too much money involved, too many tangled webs between media and gambling companies, too much information and too many things to bet on.
Talking to reporters, editors, and those in and around media, there are two potential ways a scandal could happen. The first would be a sports-media version of insider trading, where journalists place bets based on inside information before reporting it. That’s certainly possible, but given the hyper-competitive nature of the scoop scoreboard at the highest levels of sports media — and the relative lack of dedicated beat writers at lower levels — it’s probably unlikely.
The second would be a reporter who works for an outlet that’s partnered with a sports book, reporting information that directly influences a betting line. We saw this over the summer, when Shams Charania, who covers the NBA for The Athletic and has a commercial partnership with FanDuel, reported a potential change in the draft stock of Scoot Henderson, leading to a shift in betting lines (because remember, you can bet on everything).
This strikes at the heart of independent sports journalism. Is reporting an injury on the up-and-up, or does the reporter have a vested financial interest in reporting it? Are they breaking news because it’s their job, or are they manipulating a betting line to make their partners more money?
“There’s a big difference between [posting] ‘Player X is inactive today’ and ‘Player X is inactive today; here’s a link to a gambling site where you can act on that information,’” Michael Mirer of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee told me in 2022.
This year, the conditions are ripe for a bigger, more consequential version of this. What are those conditions? The money, combined with the lack of professional ethical guidelines around sports journalism and gambling.
None of the professional ethics guidelines in journalism address this area. The SPJ Code of Ethics has tenets that can be applied to sports gambling (“avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived” and “avoid…outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility”). The ethical guidelines of the Associated Press Sports Editors have a whole section on sharing notes and quotes with other reporters, but not a word about gambling. The writers’ associations for all the major sports in the U.S. don’t have specific ethical guidelines for their members.
“There’s only so much we can do,” Calvin Watkins, president of the Pro Football Writers of America, told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s up to the individual reporter to have his own morals and ethics, and it’s up to the paper or the website to police their reporters.”
It makes sense. Legalized gambling is still relatively new. Writers’ associations have spent the past few years fighting to keep player access in the aftermath of covid-era locker room shutdowns. And the truth is that sports gambling makes sports journalism more popular. Gamblers live on the information sports journalists trade in.
The downer of a looming scandal also brings with it an opportunity for change. This is a chance for sports journalists to revise and amend their codes of ethics to address gambling. It doesn’t mean a Thou Shalt Not Gamble-type restriction. That’s overly restrictive and, honestly, impractical.
But given the stakes — the overall credibility of the profession and all sports journalists — it’s time to address these questions head on and give sports reporters and editors ethical guidelines to work under. The credibility of the profession could be at stake.
Brian Moritz is an associate professor at St. Bonaventure University and the author of Sports Media Guy.
The predictions in this series are often happy, joyful, optimistic about the coming year, bursting with all the promise and possibilities facing journalism in the next 12 months.
Allow me to be a downer just this once.
My prediction for 2024 is that there will be a major scandal involving a sports journalist and sports gambling.
The monumental growth of sports gambling since the Supreme Court effectively legalized it in 2018 brings with it a set of challenges for sports journalism — and the most pressing ethical question over the next couple of years will be codifying gambling rules.
The same way Donald Trump’s candidacy is a test for the norms and practices of American political journalists, legalized sports gambling is a test for the norms and practices of sports journalists.
It’s an area ripe for a scandal. There’s simply too much money involved, too many tangled webs between media and gambling companies, too much information and too many things to bet on.
Talking to reporters, editors, and those in and around media, there are two potential ways a scandal could happen. The first would be a sports-media version of insider trading, where journalists place bets based on inside information before reporting it. That’s certainly possible, but given the hyper-competitive nature of the scoop scoreboard at the highest levels of sports media — and the relative lack of dedicated beat writers at lower levels — it’s probably unlikely.
The second would be a reporter who works for an outlet that’s partnered with a sports book, reporting information that directly influences a betting line. We saw this over the summer, when Shams Charania, who covers the NBA for The Athletic and has a commercial partnership with FanDuel, reported a potential change in the draft stock of Scoot Henderson, leading to a shift in betting lines (because remember, you can bet on everything).
This strikes at the heart of independent sports journalism. Is reporting an injury on the up-and-up, or does the reporter have a vested financial interest in reporting it? Are they breaking news because it’s their job, or are they manipulating a betting line to make their partners more money?
“There’s a big difference between [posting] ‘Player X is inactive today’ and ‘Player X is inactive today; here’s a link to a gambling site where you can act on that information,’” Michael Mirer of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee told me in 2022.
This year, the conditions are ripe for a bigger, more consequential version of this. What are those conditions? The money, combined with the lack of professional ethical guidelines around sports journalism and gambling.
None of the professional ethics guidelines in journalism address this area. The SPJ Code of Ethics has tenets that can be applied to sports gambling (“avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived” and “avoid…outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility”). The ethical guidelines of the Associated Press Sports Editors have a whole section on sharing notes and quotes with other reporters, but not a word about gambling. The writers’ associations for all the major sports in the U.S. don’t have specific ethical guidelines for their members.
“There’s only so much we can do,” Calvin Watkins, president of the Pro Football Writers of America, told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s up to the individual reporter to have his own morals and ethics, and it’s up to the paper or the website to police their reporters.”
It makes sense. Legalized gambling is still relatively new. Writers’ associations have spent the past few years fighting to keep player access in the aftermath of covid-era locker room shutdowns. And the truth is that sports gambling makes sports journalism more popular. Gamblers live on the information sports journalists trade in.
The downer of a looming scandal also brings with it an opportunity for change. This is a chance for sports journalists to revise and amend their codes of ethics to address gambling. It doesn’t mean a Thou Shalt Not Gamble-type restriction. That’s overly restrictive and, honestly, impractical.
But given the stakes — the overall credibility of the profession and all sports journalists — it’s time to address these questions head on and give sports reporters and editors ethical guidelines to work under. The credibility of the profession could be at stake.
Brian Moritz is an associate professor at St. Bonaventure University and the author of Sports Media Guy.
