With a unanimous vote, the Times Guild Unit Council and The Athletic’s contract action team approved the following statement:
As unionized workers at The New York Times, we are deeply concerned by the company’s potential deal for The Athletic to partner with Kalshi, a company whose prediction markets have been described by New York officials in our reporting as an “illegal operation.”
Any partnership between Kalshi and The Athletic would threaten our journalistic independence across the company. Despite management’s claim that The Athletic and The New York Times are separate business entities, the journalism and the work are intertwined, as any reader can see.
Prediction markets such as Kalshi, which allow users to place bets on real-world events, pose as reliable sources of data but operate without the accountability of independent, fact-based reporting. An investigation by New York’s attorney general found that Kalshi’s prediction market platform is an “illegal, unlicensed gambling operation” that exposes users to “serious personal and financial risk.”
On a fundamental level, a partnership more extensive than the purchase of advertising space — and that might integrate this product into The Athletic’s journalism — could cause readers to question our independence when we report on prediction markets.
A partnership between The Times (for The Athletic) and Kalshi would also provide validation that their prediction market data should be taken seriously as an indicator of the future. Facts prove otherwise.
New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger has said that journalistic independence is the “core value” that “answers the question of why we’re deserving of the public trust.” We call on the company to live up to that commitment and abandon this deal.