Merriam-Webster defines the word “corroborate” as follows: “[T]o support with evidence or authority: make more certain.”
There are a lot of people in the news media business who don’t seem to understand this.
On Wednesday, USA Today published an attention-grabbing headline titled, “Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford offers Senate four people who corroborate her assault claims.”
NBC News’ Peter Alexander tweeted elsewhere that his newsroom had “obtained sworn and signed declarations from 4 people who corroborate Christine Blasey Ford’s claims of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, sent to Senate Cmte.”
“Christine Blasey Ford has submitted statements from 4 people corroborating her accusations,” read a VICE headline.
Ford, who claims Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school in the 1980s, says she can’t remember the date or location of the alleged attack. She says she can’t remember how she got to the house party where she says she was assaulted. She says she can’t remember how she got home. All four witnesses to the party named by Ford have denied any recollection of what she describes. Kavanaugh denies everything.
Ford remembers only that her assailant was a young Kavanaugh.
So it comes with great interest to read Wednesday morning that four witness testimonies reportedly “corroborate” Ford’s assault allegation. Finally! Some clarity.
Except no. The testimonies, which were signed under penalty of perjury, don’t corroborate any of the allegations, or the existence of the party at which the incident supposedly occurred. We’re no closer to knowing whether Ford’s story is true than we were before these testimonies were published.
The first witness, Ford’s husband, said he learned of the attack in 2012 during a couple’s therapy session, as the Washington Post previously reported.
The second witness, Adela Gildo-Mazzon, who says she has known Ford more than 10 years, claims she learned of the alleged attack in 2013. The third witness, Keith Koegler, claims Ford told him about the attack in 2016. The fourth and final witness, Rebecca White, said Ford told her about the assault in 2017. Interestingly enough, neither Gildo-Mazzon nor White identify Kavanaugh by name. Their testimonies say only that Ford once mentioned she experienced a traumatic event when she was younger.
We still don’t have a date, location, or any sort of contemporaneous witness account to back up Ford’s allegation. We’re exactly where we started.
To be fair to Alexander, he added in a important note, “These documents affirm that Ford has been telling people close to her about this alleged assault — and naming Kavanaugh — for at least 6 years.”
Yeah, but these testimonies don’t “support with evidence” or “make more certain” her allegation. And this isn’t a big ask. You can’t “corroborate” something that allegedly occurred in the early 1980s with sworn testimony recounting something you heard 30-plus-years later.
I’m not saying there isn’t news value to these sworn and signed declarations. But it’s certainly a stretch to say they “corroborate” Ford’s story.
