AILSA CHANG, HOST:
For almost three weeks now, Israel and the U.S. have been firing missiles and bombs into Iran. And Iran, in turn, has been launching drones and missiles at U.S. military facilities and at countries in the region, including Israel.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Last week, something weird happened after one of those missiles hit.
EMANUEL FABIAN: So it begins on the 10 of March when Iran's firing missiles at Israel.
KELLY: That is Emanuel Fabian.
FABIAN: I'm the military correspondent at The Times Of Israel.
KELLY: Fabian posted a short piece on his newspaper's live blog about an Iranian missile strike near Jerusalem. He wrote that sirens went off, a loud explosion shook people's windows.
FABIAN: And I sort of moved on with my day. And that is until I started receiving kind of strange emails.
CHANG: The first strange email he got was simple.
FABIAN: It was somebody asking me to sort of update the story that instead of a missile impacting the area, they wanted me to write that it was a fragment, an interceptor fragment, and not a full missile.
CHANG: Fabian wrote back saying they were wrong. Then the second email came, asking him to make the same correction.
FABIAN: I had two theories. One is that it was maybe, you know, Iranian agents trying to coerce information out of me or something. And the other option was, maybe these are people who bet something on Polymarket.
KELLY: Polymarket is an online prediction market. It lets people across the world bet on almost anything - sports, politics and, yes, even war.
FABIAN: I went on Polymarket to take a look to try and find it. Eventually, I found the bet. And as it turns out, there's a bet, which is, did Iran strike Israel on a certain day?
KELLY: According to the rules of the bet, if an Iranian missile hits Israel, then that counts as Iran striking Israel. But if a missile is intercepted and the fragments fall down, that's a no, not counted as a strike.
FABIAN: Because of my report, all the people who had bet no are now basically demanding that I change it to an interceptor fragment in order for them to win this bet, basically.
CHANG: One person even threatened Fabian with messages like this one that he reads.
FABIAN: Either believe that we have the capabilities, and after you make us lose $900,000, we will invest no less than that to finish you, or you end this with money in your pocket and also earn back the life that you had until now.
CHANG: Fabian says he went to the police.
FABIAN: The person who messaged me - gave the police their phone number, and they were able to, of course, figure out who it is.
KELLY: Fabian published an account of what happened to him. After he did that, Polymarket posted on social media to condemn the harassment and threats that he received. The post also said it had banned the accounts of everyone involved.
CHANG: In a statement to NPR, the company added, quote, "prediction markets depend on the integrity of independent reporting. Attempts to pressure journalists to alter their reporting undermine that integrity and undermine the markets themselves," end quote. Fabian says, the whole experience has left him worried.
FABIAN: I think it's very problematic that we could be sort of in this new age where journalists could be pressured to change their reporting if they're, you know, promised winnings. And that's what's so worrying, that people could be using their information to place bets ahead of time and then having real-world consequences afterwards.
KELLY: That was Emanuel Fabian, military correspondent for The Times Of Israel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
