Well yes, haha, but if they knew or should've known that what they were reported was false and it causes monetary damages, then they can be taken to civil court. So, if they are sued they will be fighting to prove that they believed this article was true when they published it. Since Joe Fitzpatrick, one of the sources, has already come out and said that he speculated some hypotheticals that then made it into the story as fact, it doesn't seem that hard to prove that they published something they weren't sure was fact, which did cause a lot of monetary damages to quite a few companies.
except that: bloomberg is a press outlet, musk isn't, and bloomberg has no responsibility to the shareholders of the companies they covered, whereas musk is CEO.
What's perverse about it? Bloomberg decided that the market is a good way to measure impact of their stories. They're business reporters, so that makes sense. The incentive is not directional; it doesn't rely on reporters causing a stock to lose value or gain it.
The magnitude matters. Meaning journalists have an incentive to stretch the truth in either direction, as long as it'll get a reaction. A journalist now has to weigh this monetary incentive against their other incentives for being non-hyperbolic, truthful journalists.
The business insider article linked above makes it sound like a relatively nuanced measure. If the article makes a big splash but then gets wiped away by follow-up reporting, it doesn't sound like it gets rewarded.
Think about articles that don't move the market: did they contain novel, important information? If so, why didn't the market move?
It seems like this incentive encourages prioritizing stories which are unreported and meaningful.
Imagine paying reporters by how many people they got arrested. Sure would result in some terrible criminals being locked up, but it may well result in innocent people going to prison as well.
IANAL but running a story about how a bunch of companies' products are insecure if Bloomberg knew it was false and those companies could show that Bloomberg knew it was false could be libel.
Gawker was bankrupted because they were stupid -- they were ordered by a judge to take down a video, and defied that court order. If you knowingly and intentionally defy a court order, and then gloat about how you're doing it, you're going to get burnt by any judge, no matter how willing they are to listen to your core argument.
