Witnesses or sources: relations and mismatches between journalists and historians

The work of journalists and historians is provided by the report of sources or witnesses. Such work tries to portray or reconstruct a distant or an immediate past. This article proposes to discuss the relations that are formed with the protagonists of the experience; relations that are full of specificities and capable of shedding some light on the practices of both fields. The testimony is the bearer of the truth and of the fidelity of the representation. Historians live a dilemma between the moral authority of the witness of the past and the rationality demanded by the scientific paradigm and the analytical character of History. On the other hand, journalists themselves have become the guarantors of the source's accuracy, taking their own moral authority as assurance of the veracity through mechanisms such as the use of a hidden narrator.