alt Hacker NewsPrediction markets miss all the experts, whether academic or laypeople wonks, who simply don't care to have a financial stake in the decision. I can't imagine how it'd be representative. In any case, the people weighing in are getting their information from somewhere and it's not thin air. How can you understand an issue without knowing motivations/vested interests from all sides, history leading up, etc?
If I have a specific interest in a topic I can do extensive research over many hours and come to my own conclusions. But for the vast majority of news headlines I see, including almost all "national" or "world" news, I don't have the time to do hours of research. In this case, reading or one or three news articles is far more likely to give me a biased and ultimately incorrect take than looking at a prediction market, which takes all the available information and condenses it into one number that matters.