Irony of ironies: Outrage around Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book, Original Sin, is helping to sell more copies. The failure of a CNN anchor and an Axios reporter to cover President Joe Biden’s infirmities in a timely manner now delivers them free advertising for their book and a bigger haul. There is a partial fix for such warp: a media environment where people have skin in the game. But in the United States the next era of news-gathering and dissemination might be against the law.
The meta-revelation is as important as the revelation. President Biden was suffering declining acuity in office, and the media didn’t pick it up or report on it. The Tapper–Thompson book explores how that came to be.
It is not lost on the commentariat that the authors are confessing their own failings and the failings of DC’s journalists generally. On the left, Jon Stewart issued a characteristic diatribe. Megyn Kelly went after Tapper from the right.
We all have reason to lack confidence in our institutions these days. They need some fixing.
Today’s more open and decentralized media environment allows for a greater menu of information options, up to and including literal “fake news.” We should not only bear the costs. There are things that could help us grow into an improved media environment and reap its benefits.
The incentives for accurate—and intense—research and reporting are clearest in financial markets. Everyone should know the story of Hindenburg Research. The combined media and investment firm investigated public companies, seeking to hasten the fall of the badly run ones while selling their stocks short. Hindenburg’s 2021 blog post about Clover Health is an example of their craft and a dive into the firm’s philosophy. Early this year, its founder, Nathan Anderson, shuttered Hindenburg. I assume, but don’t know, that he simply has enough money now.
What if reporters—or anyone—could make money by bringing true information forward? Particularly with something as momentous as a president’s mental health, there is a lot of value to our society from having better information.
A system for rewarding people with good information already exists. The leading example is Polymarket, a platform where people can make bets on future events. A recent New York Magazine piece says:
Polymarket is unlike other gambling forums in that it’s not a bookie and it doesn’t set the odds of its markets. Each market is simply structured as a question on which you can bet “yes” or “no.” Will Volodymyr Zelenskyyy apologize to Trump? Will Fyre Festival 2 sell out? Will TikTok be banned again before May?
Imagine the opportunity for reporters—and for White House staff, visitors to the Oval Office, and political supporters—if they felt they had better information than others about something so important. They could profit from bringing it forward by putting money on the line about future events.
But here’s how the New York Magazine piece opens:
At 6 a.m. on Wednesday, November 13, eight FBI agents in black windbreakers burst through the door of Shayne Coplan’s Soho apartment with a battering ram, surprising him and his girlfriend in bed. They seized his phone from the bedside table but wouldn’t let him touch it, not even to unlock it, lest he destroy evidence that might criminally implicate him or his company, Polymarket, the popular betting platform that over a week before had set off celebrations at Mar-a-Lago when it showed Donald Trump winning the presidential election well before the networks did.
Polymarket is close enough to illegal in the United States that the company endeavors to exclude US users. Last August, eight Democratic members of Congress asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to make sure that political prediction markets were illegal. (Tongue in cheek: Did Senator Warren (D-MA) sign on because of dismay with the poor odds Polymarket users gave her crypto legislation a couple months earlier?)
I do not think prediction markets are gambling. These are games of skill, not chance—and they are not games, but a new information stew with heavy flavors of journalism and investment. There is a lot to learn about prediction markets and their permutations for good and evil. (The paragon of potential evil usage is the “assassination market.”)
Tremendous value for society can be unlocked by lining up incentives to discover and publish true information. There is no better illustration of the need than the case of President Biden’s declining acuity, hidden in plain sight of what should be the world’s best and most dogged journalists. I send my best wishes to Joe Biden with respect to his recently reported health issues.
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