The Probabalistic Estate

Chris F. Masse points out an article describing Bill Moyers’ Buying the War, to be broadcast April 25, in which many “top” journalists admit to being completely bamboozled by patriotism and the security state after 9/11. Willing fools include Dan Rather, former CBS anchor, and Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN.

My favorite article excerpt:

[E]ditors at the Panama City (Fla.) News-Herald received an order from above, “Do not use photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails.”

“Patriots” are the most likely domestic terrorists, right after the security state itself.

What if there were prediction market tickers for invasion outcomes running in the “footer” (I have no idea what the bottom of a TV screen is called, so I’ll borrow terminology) of the CBS newscast and CNN, or daily prices and inferred probabilities alongside newspaper stories?

Would the traders have been as stupid in aggregate as the journalists?

To make sense of the post title see and this.

2 Responses

  1. […] the journalos spend time leaking the posteriors of CEOs and politicians, then no wonder that we got the Iraq war. Read the last blog posts by Chris. F. Masse:The pictures of the BetFair Bet-o-MobileThe Jock […]

  2. […] always for me ‘patriot’ is a term of derision, but here I mean something specific: putting one’s preferred issues and interests to the side […]

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