A witness is truthful, if you can cooperate what he/she said. One needs to find an independent, additional source of the same information, which can confirm the basic details. That is the obligation of an investigative journalist; he/she needs to meet the conventional standards of evidence. Unless, you are someone of such an impeccable reputation, people will not believe you without a second source. MacFaydyen can think of only one investigative reporter, who has a sufficiently strong reputation that he can get away with saying “an anonymous source told me A”, and you'll believe him, without saying, this story was confirmed by an independent discussion with B, or C.
Lots of people are observers and very few who are witnesses, because a witness is someone who comes forth with what they have observed rather than keeping it to themselves. To be a witness a person needs to have a notion of the future that determines how you regard the past and certainly how you act in the present. To do so, it requires a sense of the future. “Because if you don't believe in the future, why would you ever be a witness?” according to MacFadyen.
The good witness
For MacFaydyen a good witness is critical to investigating or reporting. A good witness is someone who bears a truthful account of something they witnessed, something they saw, and can describe it with the same accuracy, hopefully, as they saw it.
