{"id":301096,"date":"2025-12-05T21:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/301096\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T21:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:39:08","slug":"cnn-partners-with-a-gambling-app-that-lets-you-wager-on-starvation-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/301096\/","title":{"rendered":"CNN Partners With a Gambling App That Lets You Wager on Starvation in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Consistent with the United States\u2019 continued slide into an economy powered almost entirely by LLM slop, financialization, and ever-pervasive exploitative gambling, \u201cprediction market app\u201d Kalshi \u201centered into an official partnership\u201d with CNN this week to bring their \u201cdata to CNN\u2019s journalism across its television, digital and social channels.\u201d Soon, CNN will run live odds on world events where its viewers can gamble on them in real time on their smartphones. The \u201cdata\u201d (see: betting markets) will, according to Axios<\/a>, \u201cbe featured on CNN\u2019s air through a real-time data ticker and can be referenced across CNN\u2019s platforms when journalists discuss news predictions. The partnership will include prediction market content related to politics, news, culture and weather. The integration will be championed by CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten, who will tap into real-time insights from Kalshi in his reporting on air, both via linear TV and CNN\u2019s new streaming subscription service.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day after this story broke, Wall Street news network CNBC announced<\/a> a similar \u201cexclusive partnership\u201d with Kalshi, marking a grim turn for TV news. \u201cStarting in 2026, CNBC will incorporate exclusive Kalshi predictions market data [see: betting props] into its programs,\u201d the press release read. What are these events that viewers will be able to bet on? Some are seemingly harmless enough: who will win an upcoming election, the weather in Chicago, the federal government\u2019s jobs numbers, or what will be said on Kroger\u2019s next earnings call. But many offerings are on life and death issues that will, as a matter of course, reduce these issues to just another chip on a roulette table for Western audiences increasingly isolated from the violence and suffering their governments inflict on the global south. Take, for example, one recent Kalshi betting market that allowed people to bet on whether Palestinians in Gaza would suffer mass starvation. <\/p>\n

\u201cWill the IPC classify Gaza as experiencing famine this year?\u201d read the wager<\/a> from this past summer. The bet was eventually settled in the affirmative after the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) did indeed declare<\/a> famine in Gaza on Aug. 22. The more overtly cynical Polymarket, a rival of Kalshi that\u2019s backed by right-wing multibillionaire Peter Thiel, allows for even more obscene wagering, permitting users to bet on whether Palestinians will be ethnically cleansed<\/a>. \u201cGaza mass population relocation in 2025?\u201d reads one of its many Gaza-related betting markets. You can also bet on when Israel will bomb Gaza<\/a>, bomb the West Bank<\/a>, or annex either<\/a>. <\/p>\n

One cannot, of course, wager on when or if Hamas will attack Israel since, in polite circles, Israelis are considered fully human and Palestinians are not. <\/p>\n

Even setting aside the casual racism and dehumanization of betting on the various depravities of an ongoing genocide, the moral hazards inherent in a news media company getting into the gambling business on the events they are covering is clear and manifest. Obviously, reporters, pundits and anchors cannot determine world events, but they very much can determine the perception of world events, and can certainly do so enough to significantly move markets. Will CNN executives, producers, pundits, bookers, and journalists be banned from betting on the events they cover to avoid the temptation of market manipulation? Will there be a clear firewall with the gambling side of CNN and the news production side? Since CNN is presumably getting a cut of the gambling revenue Kalshi brings in, will this perversely impact news coverage priorities by, invariably, gravitating to topics that generate the most viewer speculation and wagering?<\/p>\n

Related Story<\/p>\n


\n \"Hillary
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\n The former secretary of state spoke at a conference organized by a far right Israeli paper run by a Trump megadonor.\n <\/p>\n

None of the CNN or Kalshi press releases addressed any of these glaring ethical issues. Nor, it\u2019s worth highlighting, are those backing these betting markets separate from the human immiseration being wagered on. Kalshi\u2019s two biggest investors, Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, are also heavily invested in the very same Israeli military<\/a> whose genocide is serving as a popular forum for gambling markets. The most visible partner at Sequoia Capital, Shaun Maguire, is an outspoken supporter of Israel\u2019s genocide, an open racist<\/a>, and frequently discusses the need for using tech to promote Israeli propaganda. \u201cThe future of information warfare is AI,\u201d Maguire said<\/a> at the International DefenseTech Summit in Tel Aviv earlier this week. \u201cIf Israel doesn\u2019t build its own [information war] engines, defensive and offensive, it will be outmaneuvered in a war it can\u2019t see but is already in.\u201d <\/p>\n

To what extent will these betting markets help fuel said \u201cinformation warfare\u201d? How much will betting market manipulation, once integrated into the news, become its own power-serving self-fulfilling prophecy? In February 2025, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was given a 8% chance to win the election by Kalshi<\/a>. If, at the time, CNN made this fact central in its coverage, how much would it have influenced voters\u2019 perceptions of the race? How would it have impacted momentum? Polling has long served this conservative argument-by-tautology function, but the full embrace of betting markets \u2014 with their supposed air of predictive power \u2014 will now supercharge this already perverse, anti-democratic and anti-intellectual dynamic. <\/p>\n

The Trump family \u2014 which has increased its fortune by $1.8 billion since his election<\/a>, mostly through open corruption in crypto \u2014 is, of course, in on the action, with Donald Trump Jr. being named<\/a> a \u201cstrategic advisor\u201d to Kalshi earlier this year, presumably for his brilliant mind and ability to gauge world events and not his access to insider information. <\/p>\n

The whole enterprise is ripe with dehumanization, corruption, market manipulation, exploitation, and moral decay. What is the social utility of any of this? What value is being created? What disease is being cured? What air is being cleaned? What life is being improved by any of this? The moral pitch, when Kalshi and its backers bother to make one, is that it will somehow reveal underlying \u201ctruths\u201d in our media and thus give news creators the ability to better focus on this supposed \u201ctruth.\u201d <\/p>\n

This justification is just another iteration of the age-old half-assed moral pretext given by all professional speculators who produce nothing of value \u2014 \u201cmarket liquidity,\u201d \u201cmore efficient markets,\u201d etc., etc. \u2014 but it\u2019s even more spurious in this case since the \u201ctruths\u201d being wagered on are so easily subject to insider trading and manipulation. There are no greater \u201ctruths\u201d uncovered by news betting markets, just an endless series of rent seeking, dehumanized speculation, and gamification of war<\/a>, poverty, and disease. \u201cThe long-term vision,\u201d Klashi co-founder Tarek Mansour recently told<\/a> a panel at Future of Global Markets 2025 Conference, \u201cis to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion.\u201d Politics and political opinions not as the raw matter of civic virtue, or social progress, or increasing human welfare, but just another facet of our lives \u2014 like sports<\/a>, education<\/a>, sexual intimacy<\/a> \u2014 well on its way to being financialized, fleeced, and sold back to us at five times the price.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, CNN\u2019s open embrace of institutional gambling on news events is an acknowledgment of something that\u2019s been clear for a while: news is not something that\u2019s to be uncovered, not a truth to be revealed in pursuit of justice or holding power to account, not something meant to edify or educate \u2014 but just more content, more slop, another entertainment product to pass the time and gawk at. But most important of all, it has to be devoid of moral or political content, it can never contain a clear call to action nor can it be part of any political project \u2014 unless, of course, it aligns with US geopolitical interests<\/a>. The horrific things we are witnessing are not something we can do anything about beyond vaguely pulling a lever once every two years. It\u2019s only something we can passively consume and witness \u2014 a dynamic that elements within news organizations like CNN have worked to push back against, but which this \u201cpartnership\u201d has now effectively snuffed out. All that\u2019s left will be aggregation and wagering, gawking and rubber-necking at images of suffering, death, and starvation. But don\u2019t worry, you\u2019re no longer just a passive consumer of the horror content, you\u2019re a passive consumer with a new and exciting ersatz agency allowing you to wager and lose money on the world events for which \u2014 we are repeatedly told \u2014 you can do nothing to meaningfully influence.<\/p>\n

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