Can you believe the media on gambling?
Can you believe what the media reports about gambling? Probably not. There are a couple of problems here. First some media like http://www.foxnews.com/ are supporting a conservative agenda that really just doesn’t fit in with the idea of gambling. But really the bigger problem stems from the whole concept of “news.” See, news isn’t something that happens when everything is going well. That millions of people visit gambling sites every day and nothing terrible happens isn’t newsworthy. We wouldn’t all tune into the news if it was just a list of things that were going right in the world. News only happens when something changes and usually when something goes wrong.
Which is why the news about online poker lately has been about the problems over at Full Tilt Poker. The irony of the situation is that most of the major news media didn’t even pick up on a problem the online poker world had been following for months until someone in Washington DC used the word Ponzi scheme in connection with the online poker room. It isn’t an entirely accurate accusation but it gave the news something to focus on — see online gambling is bad. This site was running a Ponzi scheme.
Now, in fairness, the problem wasn’t a Ponzi scheme but it really was the victim of terribly bad management. The sort of money management normally reserved for Wall Street. The site had mingled player funds with operating funds, which worked fine as long as business was brisk. But when the US operations were unexpectedly shut down and the site left owing US players about 150 million dollars, the money just wasn’t there. And then they had trouble paying other players. The end result was that they lost their license, which was the proper thing to happen. Players are still owed money and Full Tilt will need to pay that out to get their license back. Not a good day in the poker world for lots of people. Which is why it was news.
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