Corroboration: Why One Source Is Never Enough
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A single source, however credible it may seem at first glance, carries a single point of view and a single set of possible errors baked into it. Corroboration means finding an independent second source that supports the same claim without simply repeating the first one's original account.
Independence is the key word in that sentence. Two newspaper articles drawing on the same original report are not really two sources, they are one source cited twice over. Real corroboration requires a genuinely separate origin, whether that is a different document, a different witness, or an entirely different kind of record.
Where corroboration cannot be found despite genuine effort, the honest move is to say so plainly on the page, marking a claim as reported rather than confirmed. That small distinction protects both the reader's trust and the writer's own credibility over time. Readers are generally far more forgiving of an honestly flagged limitation than they are of a confident claim resting on a single, uncorroborated account.