Gambling on a sport/event you cover

What is the general guideline on business reporters and investments? I can't imagine they have to agree to keep all of their money in a mattress. But, on the other hand, the sticky ethical wickets seem endless.

 

It' called conflict of interest.

Like judges and business writers, you'd better recuse yourself if you're in a professional position where your credibility depends on your objectivity.

 

Theoretically, a writer could impact the line by keeping something under wraps, most obviously an injury. But I think the more realistic potential for a breach of journalistic duty exists on the back end, where a big gambling win or loss on a game a reporter is covering could affect the tone and scope of his coverage of said event. We aren't supposed to have a vested interest in the subject(s) of our coverage, and a wager would certainly qualify as a vested interest. I don't see a huge problem in NCAA brackets or fantasy sports, although by the letter of the law those should be avoided as well. But in my fantasy league, I won't draft players from the team that I cover.

 

Suppose the March Madness bracket pool is for everyone working in the Sports Dept of the same newspaper? Would that be OK?

 

If this is a burning issue with you, you've been to one too many SPJ meetings and really need to go out and find a hobby you enjoy.

 

In theory a sportswriter could throw a betting line, but in practice it requires him or her throwing down millions of dollars and people working together to make it happen.

Not really likely. But a more interesting question is if a gambler has a sportswriter or a pack of them working as tipsters and would that be unethical because that's happening now in the form of freelancing for certain publications geared to gambling.

I'm not a Poynter-style navel gazer, so I'd say neither is really wrong just more a matter of how comfortable you are with sleaze.

 

Wow, has the world changed since that piece came out.

 

I'm less concerned with the idea of influencing events than with the simple fact that gambling makes it impossible for you to view the game objectively. Gambling does some interesting things to our minds, and it definitely skews the way we look at the world (not that there's anything wrong with it for fun).

 

I will only note that in today's world, it's highly-unlikely that a media reporter would have unique access to a significant nugget of professional-sporting injury information for a sustained time period.

 

Without gambling, there wouldn't be any horse racing, so a horse racing writer who doesn't bet every once in a while is giving his/her readers a view of the sport that's more skewed than any conflict of interest could make it. For one thing, they would lack the ability to fully communicate how damn HARD handicapping is.
The rest of this thread strikes me as arguing about a problem that doesn't exist.
PS: In Jimmy Breslin's weird book on Damon Runyon, he had a little commentary in the middle of dealing with Runyon being at the Dempsey-Willard fight noting that sportswriters of the Golden Age often had considerable sums riding on events they covered. This is as close to the exact wording of the comment I can remember. "This made their stories horribly biased. It also made them a thrill to read."

 

Many of the major sports columnists of the time were huge (for the period) gamblers . . . Ring Lardner, among others.

 

And in many cases, earned as much as the athletes they covered.