A word about what constitutes evidence

I´m republishing this short video (original source here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtveyWBCt5g) because I´m concerned that knee-jerk reactions to a lot of my journalism center around concepts like´´evidence´´ and ´´proof´´ without people really stepping back to consider what these terms mean. The proverbial ´´conspiracy theory´´ as a dismissive epithet is a good example. In court they put the pieces of the puzzle together, even if there is not always direct evidence like eye witness, or even if there might be a problem with direct evidence. Here he says that circumstancial evidence is actually sometimes better than direct evidence. We do the same thing in journalism! Although ´´circumstantial evidence´´ gets a bad rap, judges actually look for this because it is considered very strong!! Often people react the way they do to hard stories in journalism implicating people in power because, having not looked at the reports, they cannot imagine any type of evidence that would support the conclusion of the headlines. Then there is the tedency to caricature the reports as obviously imposible from the outselt, ´´Our leaders would never do something that horrific!´´, for example, in response to the Sep 11th truth movement, weather manipulation or U.S government drug dealing. My concern is that we toss around words like ´´evidence´´, ´´theory´´, ´´proof´´ without stopping to consider what these concepts really mean and, after all, what is good for the goose is good for the gander and it seems, in the hit pieces written against alternative journalism, the standards that are used in court are dropped. Circumstantial evidence is indirect evidence that does not, on its face, prove a fact in issue but gives rise to a logical inference that the fact exists. Circumstantial evidence requires drawing additional reasonable inferences in order to support the claim. Although this gets a bad rap, it´s what judges look for!