First Take: Usually, being in the presence of the event. Sometimes called “direct” witnessing or the act behind so-called “first hand” accounts.

Deeper: Of course, journalists of all kinds seek out witnesses to events, or witness themselves.  However, witnessing can in fact have another meaning: to testify, and thus provide evidence (as in “bear witness). Indeed, the term “to witness,” in older usages in English still in existence today, carried religious (specifically Christian) associations of the moral obligation to “bear in mind,” or legal verification (as in “witnessing” a commercial transaction). Sometimes, “to witness” was connected to the preposition “for,” as in testifying on someone’s behalf, or re-experiencing something that happened to someone else.

Moreover, these dual meanings (of seeing and providing the experience of being what we would now call an “ally”) suggests why some forms of immersion journalism attempt to recreate the reporter’s immediate viewing, so as to re-create physical witnessing, or what is called “embodied” viewing (see the discussion of style in Chapter 3). In some cases, a phenomenological approach can recreate embodiment without the notion of being necessarily allied (see Chapter 5). But on the other hand, the secondary meaning, the “for”-ness, also bears upon the relationship between (a) the journalist and the subject and (b) the mainstream claim to neutrality.

Recommended Reading: Sue Tait, “Bearing Witness, Journalism, and Moral Responsibility,” Media, Culture & Society 33 (2011):1220-1235.