Wisdom of crowds

[How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect - Jan Lorenza - Heiko Rauhutb - Frank Schweitzera - Dirk Helbingb]

This study finds that sharing information can destroy the "Wisdom of crowds".

Some good comments here: [Economist's View]

So applied to the stock market, you have a bunch of independent people determining the value of a share of stock in a company. The median estimate of the group will likely be as or more accurate than an expert's. The wisdom of the crowd. Then CNBC, FOX Finance, the Wall street journal and all those other "experts" destroy this wisdom by letting those in the group know what the others think.

This would mean that free-markets, which may be efficient by themselves, may be corrupted by mass media informing the people of others expectations?

tnb