Comment by strgcmc

I think you might be over-fixated on a very prediction-market-esque framing of this plot device... if you broaden it slightly, the idea of someone in a fictional world manipulating the news reporting of an act or set of acts, rather than caring so much about the root act itself, is as stated before, quite common.

For example, this from House of Cards: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/arts/television/house-of-...

> Pollyhop is a fictional, Google-esque search engine that according to Leann’s polling expert is being exploited by the Republican candidate Will Conway in ways that suggest Underwood can’t possibly beat him in the general election. The explanation of how Pollyhop works is convoluted at best, but the gist is that Conway and his people are manipulating search engine results so that only positive coverage of their side appears.

Or more recent examples of what essentially boils down to the plot device of "media manipulation" aka manipulating the "news reporting of the act":

- See the most recent season of Industry, which included several plot points about manipulating news coverage as a short-seller and the company being targeted fought back and forth (including specific focus on the individual journalists involved)

- See Andor, everything about how the Empire twists perception of what's happening on Ghorman, leading up the Ghorman massacre itself, and then culminating in Mon Mothma's speech in the Senate denouncing "the death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil"

- See The Orville, a particular episode: https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule which includes the plot point of hacking that society's "master feed" to plant false manipulative stories to curry public favor and save a character from being punished

- See The Boys, how Vought manipulates the media to twist coverage of their "heroes" even when they commit atrocities

- See other House of Cards plotlines involving Zoe Barnes and being a direct mouthpiece for Frank Underwood

I think the only real difference if any, is that in the most common form of portrayal, maybe less attention is paid to the journalist as the point of leverage, and how they deal with threats or bribes or whatever. The fact that such manipulation occurs, is commonly accepted as a trope, without requiring too much of a deep dive. Whether a story choose to focus on the "reporter's perspective" is perhaps less common, but not uncommon IMO.