> How are you not arguing that journalists should report what they think, rather than what they know?

I changed your question slightly, but I hope I preserved the intent of it. If not, please let me know!

I guess my point is that "knowledge" I have is just a special class of "thoughts" (or "beliefs") I have, where my surety in them is above some particular threshold. It's certainly not the case that most of my knowledge is absolute and couldn't (theoretically) be wrong. (At least, as I think you're meaning it, we could reasonably say I "know" my bed is in my bedroom, even though, strictly speaking, I'm in my living room and it might be elsewhere.)

I would argue that the journalists are then reporting knowledge: that they have good (established, documented) reason to think that the priors are some particular way (which would be knowledge), and given those priors with some facts, the CIA/NSA/etc is up to some class of actions, of which the told story is an example member, which is again knowledge, because we can have a stronger belief that the class of actions is correct than the particulars. An example might be: you're not sure that I cut the victim with a knife, but the slash marks all over his body indicate some kind of cutting instrument. Is it not useful to talk about me slashing him?

Similarly, I would argue that I expect journalists to report knowledge in the usual sense, but allow them to present knowledge about things like priors or that something is in a class of behaviors, rather than just knowledge that a specific behavior occurred. (Which is what I get out of your text, but I don't think is actually what you're trying to claim.)

It's certainly common in mathematics to introduce talking about a class of objects with a few definite examples, and I feel that the reporters telling "fictionalized but consistent with facts" stories to exemplify the class of things we know the CIA is up to (or capable of) is meaningful and useful journalism. That kind of writing helps us picture and understand what the class of (likely) actions really looks like, particularly if we read multiple sources which picked different examples from the class. Of course, I think we both agree that journalists could be clearer about when they're doing that kind of thing, and the field of journalism could obviously do better on epistemology in general.

I guess my argument could be summarized as: the knowledge being shared by those kinds of reports isn't about the specific actions of the CIA being discussed in the story, but rather, the CIA priors versus background priors (in context and historical pieces) and the knowledge that the CIA is up to something of the flavor in the article.

I also have a lot of sympathy for your position, and get where you're coming from, but let me ask you this: how do you think journalists should professionally convey information about CIA behavioral priors (eg, that they're systemic liars and career criminals) and sufficient evidence (in light of those priors) to suggest the CIA is doing something against a community when they don't have sufficient evidence for any particular claim, eg, that it was actually CIA officers selling crack versus enabling selling crack by claiming drug dealer phone numbers were agency ones to police versus just not doing anything to stop it because it served their ends?

Surely you agree that journalists should be able to present the claim that the CIA willfully failed in their duty to protect black communities from foreign drug interests, and even probably actively worked against them, without having to get bogged down in the specifics of which actions you think they perpetrated when if there's sufficient circumstantial evidence that something unusual occurred.

Otherwise, how would you ever write a story about the actions of experts in plausible deniability?