Glance at a newspaper. Listen to the radio. Watch TV. What you
see is people creating news, stories, and yes, history. How
accurate is it? When does something become history? Does a fact,
an event, a person become history – or do we create history by
creating meaning and significance for that fact, that event,
that person? Actually, in the modern field of history, we argue
the latter. Not all facts become history, although they may very
well be in the past. Not all past events or people in the past
become history – and therein lies the point. History is a
creation of people, in all their messy glory. What
differentiates rumor, innuendo, lies, spin and rhetoric from
history are the methods used: and that is what historians are
supposed to do. We’re supposed to apply our training and skills
to gather, analyze, synthesize and interpret evidence in
specific historically-appropriate ways. And the evidence has to
be examined carefully before being incorporated into the
analysis, so source credibility is essential.