Method
How we check facts
Every episode is built from documents first and pictures second. These are the checks each one goes through before it is published.
Three checks before anything airs
A claim log comes first
Before a script is written, every fact the episode will state goes into a claim log: the claim in plain words, the source it rests on, the exact reference, and the credit that will appear on screen. The script is written only from claims marked verified.
A second check before it airs
A separate review goes through the finished episode against the claim log, line by line and number by number, before it can be scheduled. Anything that doesn’t match is fixed or cut.
The source goes on screen
Every narrated number carries its source on screen. The full source list goes in the video description and on the episode’s page on this site.
When sources disagree
Records from the war often give different numbers for the same event: how many people died on the Death Railway, how many prisoners were aboard a ship. When good sources disagree, we show the range or the figures side by side, say who gives which, and say so out loud.
Real archive, credited
Every photograph and film clip in our episodes is real archive material: wartime photographs and film from public collections such as the Australian War Memorial and the US National Archives, credited by catalogue number. Restoration means cleaning, cropping, grading and enlarging small photographs. It never adds people or objects that were not there.
A few scenes in some episodes are marked “Reconstruction” on screen. They are illustrations, not archive film, and the video description says so. No picture on this website is a reconstruction.
Narration is synthesized
The narrator’s voice is a synthetic voice. No real person is depicted or imitated. Each video description carries the same line.
The dead and the war graves
We do not show images of human remains. We do not publish the positions of wrecks that hold the dead: they are war graves.
Rights
Most of the material we use is in the public domain: government records, and works whose copyright has expired. Some photographs are used under Creative Commons licences and are credited with the licence. If you hold the rights to something we have used and believe we got it wrong, write to us.
Corrections
If we get something wrong, we fix it in the open. Send us your source and we check it against our claim log. If we were wrong, the correction is pinned under the video, added to its description and logged on this site with the date.