Much to my own dismay, this is now the second in a series of diaries--the first published only a few hours ago. In that diary I reviewed the original source for the claim that Obama proposed raising the Medicare Eligibility Age. I noted that Stein, the person who wrote the initial piece had relied on 5 unnamed democratic and republican sources, and that Stein stated that the sources disagreed on he seriousness of Obama's proposal. This is not my interpretation--its what Stein said.
So now, I see a new Reclisted diary citing Ezra Klein's recent evaluation of the "Big Deal" Obama offered the republicans.
The leadoff paragraph in that diary states.
Ezra Klein has the full details of what President Obama offered on the table for the $4 trillion "big deal," and was left stunned at how much President Obama had offered in concessions to the Republicans:
Here's the problem, Klein doesn't have any details on anything. All of his sources are...other reporters and their unnamed sources.
Klein starts his analysis of Obama's proposals by linking to...you guessed it...Sam Stein's article from this morning (the one discussed above). His next citation is to the recent, unsourced story about the chained vs unchained CPI from...another of Klein's posts, in which he says
Nevertheless, it’s been seriously discussed inside the debt-ceiling negotiations, and Republicans have been careful not to rule it out. I wouldn’t put extremely high odds on seeing it in the final compromise, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find it there, either.
That's it. He doesn't even bother with mentioning his sources.
The rest of Klein's article goes on to draw from other journalists, all relying on unnamed sources.
So why do I care? To be clear, Klein...or more accurately all the folks Klein cited for his basic information...might be right. I don't know. My problem is not with discussing Klein's story. My problem is with presenting it as fact without noting its limitations. These are the final paragraphs of the diary in question.
Imagine what would've happened if John Boehner had said yes to the President's "big deal." The President, a Democrat, offered to cut Social Security, Medicare, and extend most of the Bush tax cuts. If not for Eric Cantor's reticence on the revenue issue, it's highly likely that John Boehner would've said yes.
And thus the knife would have been inserted in the heart of the New Deal, and into the Democratic party platform, thus harming the chances of Democrats to take back Congress in 2012. Even with that said, the Republicans will still attack Democrats on this because the President put out the prospect of cutting SS, Medicare, and Medicaid on the table. Once it's out there, it's hard to take it back.
Ezra Klein does not have any details on the "big deal," let alone the "full details." Klein only has links to other journalists who have unnamed sources with accounts, and in some instances conflicting accounts, of what Obama proposed. So where does all the certainty in the diary come from? Really, couldn't the diarist have thrown in at least one or two "if accounts are accurate" or "based on unnamed sources" or such? It matters...we need to be more clear about what are "facts" and what are facts.
As I said in the conclusion of my first diary in this series today.
The point here is that these days many of our facts are the product of a process of distillation. A process that strips the nuance, limitations and hesitations from a story--a process that turns things that might be into facts that are.
And then we finally reach step 4: A pie fight on Daily Kos over something which may or may not be true, with each side claiming to know--for sure--the accuracy of their facts.
We are going to be getting a lot of unsourced claims about the default negotiations in the next few weeks. Lets all note when claims are unsourced and when unnamed sources disagree when we talk about them.
The first requirement of a fact based community is noting when we can be sure of our facts--and when we cannot.