Identify the version you are watching
Begin with the publisher and the date. Is this a police release, a Street Crime UK programme, or a repost with a new caption? Keep the incident date separate from both upload dates. Record whether the page describes an edited release, a documentary, a reconstruction or an illustration. The wording 'complete available edit' can describe all of a released clip without meaning all of an operation was recorded or published.
Find the accompanying source link before relying on a caption that appears elsewhere. A cropped repost can lose the force's explanation or the date that makes an old operation recognisable as archive. If the original link no longer works, say so in your notes; another person's reupload does not automatically replace its provenance.
Make three columns for the claims
Separate 'visible or audible in this sequence', 'reported by the written source' and 'not established here'. Put a claimed recovery in the second column when the police release describes it but the released images do not show it. Put a court result there too, unless the item actually includes the relevant court record. This keeps an arrest sequence from being made to carry every later claim in the case.
Use concrete descriptions in the first column: an officer enters a room, a person speaks, or an object is shown. Identification, ownership, chemical composition and the legal significance of an object may require evidence outside the picture. Write down the source for those conclusions instead of treating a close-up as proof of them all.
Worked example: the Gurnos investigation
South Wales Police's 29 April 2026 report distinguishes an August 2025 incident from later investigative work. It describes a phone and casing found at the scene, phone material, CCTV, ammunition recovered during a home search and forensic testing of the casing. Those are different sources of information. A body-worn sequence of a later arrest does not itself show how each was examined.
The existing Gurnos companion identifies the released film as later arrest and search activity, not the original altercation. Compare its description with the force's written account. The force reports that testing connected the casing to a self-loading pistol; that does not give a viewer permission to invent a firing sequence or identify a shooter from an arrest clip. Keep the laboratory finding attributed to the police report and the unseen sequence unresolved.
Notice missing time without inventing its explanation
A change of camera, a visible clock jump, an abrupt audio cut or a move to a different room can mark a break. Note where it occurs and what is no longer continuous. Do not assume a silence means nothing was said, or that an activity did not happen because it is absent from the public edit. Equally, do not supply dialogue, motives or events for the missing interval.
Sometimes the publisher explains a cut or redaction; sometimes it does not. Keep that explanation attributed. A gap by itself does not establish misconduct, prove an accusation or show that the omitted material favours one account. The useful question is narrower: which claim can this particular sequence support?
Separate artwork, narration and the court result
Read image captions as well as headlines. An editorial illustration is not a photograph of the incident, a recovered exhibit or an identified person. Background montage from another operation is not linked evidence for the case beside it. Narration can explain a reported finding, but a confident voice does not turn an unseen event into an observed one.
Finish by comparing the programme's account of the outcome with its dated source. Does the source report an allegation, an admission, a trial decision or a sentence? The CPS guide linked below explains why those stages should be distinguished in England and Wales. Our Gurnos companion provides a practical place to practise this method: keep the filmed police activity, the reported investigative findings and each person's court outcome in separate notes.
Sources and scope
A method for comparing public media and its sources, not a new film review or an expert opinion about evidence. The Gurnos example uses a verified police release and the existing labelled companion; no unseen event or current custody status is inferred.