Well Informed Intermediaries in Strategic Communication∗

This paper studies how a sender with private information can influence the decisionmaker through well informed intermediaries. Both the sender and the intermediary may be independently objective or biased: with the objective type assumed to pass on the most accurate information while the biased type wanting to push a particular agenda but also to appear objective. Although using one’s own information is a sign of objectivity, the biased intermediary selectively incorporates the sender’s information to push his agenda, and his truth-telling incentives always decrease in those of the biased sender’s. Hence measures raising the sender’s reputation cost worsen the intermediary’s distortion and may make the decisionmaker strictly worse off. In contrast, the biased sender’s and the intermediary’s truth-telling incentives are strategic complements if they report simultaneously. JEL classification: C70, D82, M31, M38