Civilian Reporters and Horse Racing
I was at the InMediaHK First Anniversary Forum at the Cattle Depot Artists Village. I asked a question about which I will say something more later. Here, I want to deal with an example of something that I deemed to be interesting for civilian reporters.
The general background was that mainstream media do not often cover all the subjects adequately, often for structural reasons. Here are some reasons offered bythe speakers:
One of the speakers spoke of holding a protest at the Housing Authority. At issue was a decision to refuse public housing to all single persons under the age of 40, because these people could surely continue to live with their parents. So the protest activities were coordinated with the mainstream media, who hung around for about 30 minutes to take photos of the tent in which the protestors intend to stay overnight. After the mainstream media left, all sorts of other interesting things actually happened but they will go unreported unless the civilian reporters take the matter into their own hands. This is understandable for the mainstream media reporters, who have multiple assignments each day (unless the reporter is on paparazzi duty following a 'person of interest' around). So this is related to the nature and amount of work for the reporters.
Another reason is that newspapers are businesses that need money to operate. One source of income is advertisements. So it is almost for certain that there will be some subjects that newspapers will no go near. See no evil, speak no evil. For example, the InMediaHK speakers referred to the case of the CUHK alumnus, who happens to head a certain large bank, acting in an inappropriate way in public. Any newspaper which blows up that story may risk losing a big chunk of advertising dollars. Indeed, you can see my previous post for the 'sensitive' language used in reporting that case.
Another source of income is copy sales (either subscriptions or single-copy sales at news stands and convenience stores). So newspapers will stay away from known controversial topics that may lead to reader boycotts.
Generally, the media are the fourth estate and it has the function to supervise and monitor the government in order to protect the public interest. My interest is in just who is supervising and monitoring the media to protect the public interests. If the mainstream media is structurally incapable of supervising and monitoring themselves, then the function has to go to civilian reporters who are not beholden to special interests.
I will offer an example of something that mainstream media won't go anywhere near. It is horse-racing. Here, I am not talking about labor disputes, race fixing, jockey club inside politics and other scandals. For me, the true scandal is how the newspapers provide horse-racing information, specificallly about their 'expert' picks. I open up a typical Hong Kong newspaper and I look at the horse-racing section. There are loads of data, such as the previous records of the horses in the race (e.g. times, positions, distances, riders, training, etc). Those are pure data and therefore known and shared by all writers and bettors. And then we have the picks from the 'experts' and there are usually a dozen or so. Each of them will make his/her picks for the day's races. On the next day, when you come back, you will can find out how the 'experts' actually did with their picks. So you have someone who got eight winners yesterday and so on.
Implicit in those 'expert' performances is the message that the bettor would have won lots of money if they had followed this 'expert' who writes exclusively for this newspapers (actually, it is likely that some of them will write for more than one newspaper using different pseudonyms). It is distressing for a professional statistician to be reading about this sort of situation.
Here is some elementary statistical theory. I have a perfect coin. If I flip it and there is a 50% chance for a head and a 50% chance for a tail. So I give this coin to 12 different people (=horse-racing 'experts' writing for a newspaper). To each person, I ask them to flip the coin ten times (=ten races on the day) and I count the number of heads (=picking the race winner).
What do I expect to see? Will each of the 12 different people all get exactly 5 heads. No. A more typical scenario is that it will be something like this: one will get 8 heads, one will get 7, two will get 6, three will get 5, two will get 4 and one will get 3. There is a random distribution, centered around five (=50%) but with some dispersion. Is it fair for me to showcase the 'genius' who got 8? Remember, the coin was perfect and the only reason that 8 came up was due to chance alone. If I ask the 'genius' to flip again for me (=next week's ten races), he is just as likely to get a 2 as an 8 next time.
What can a civilian reporter do? It isn't even a case of needing to have an inside mole within a newspaper to tell you what is going on. We already know what is going on. Many 'experts' were hired and the best performer was highlighted. The question is how to get to the truth out.
With some patience, the civilian reporter can look through a bunch of newspapers and set up a spreadsheet to track the performances of the 'experts' over some period of time. The exercise above says that you cannot rely on one day's results only, because it is a matter of 'luck.' But someone may be consistently better than others over a long period of time; maybe not this particular week, but you will be winning if you follow his/her tips over the long haul. Meanwhile, there may be others who are consistently worse than others over a long period of time; maybe not this particular week, but you will be losing if you follow his/her tips over the long haul.
[Note: Technically speaking, this is more than just counting the percentage of winning picks. It is not about a headcount; it is about winning money. So you can play a hypothetical scenario of investing HK$100 in each race according to the expert's picks. An expert who picks eight winners is still going to come out losing if all the picks are hot favorites that pays 1.1:1; thus an initial total investment of HK$1,000 brought in only HK$880. Meanwhile, another expert who picks only one winner can come ahead, if that winner paid 50:1; thus an initial investment of HK$1,000 brought in HK$5,000.]
The key characteristics of this exercise are these. One, the mainstream media will never do this type of project, because they are afraid of what they may find. Maybe someone has even done it, but the results were probably buried deep in the ground. Can you imagine if it was found that none of the 'experts' deliver positive results? That would put them all out of business. Second, this is in the public interest, given the central part that horse-racing plays in the lives of so many citizens (excluding me -- I am a professional statistician, so I am not interesting in handing my money over to others at such unfavorable odds).