Dhaka Tribune uses old videos in French student protest report
Recently, the news outlet Dhaka Tribune published a video report on its official Facebook page regarding the movement led by high school students that has spread across France. A fact-check by Dismislab has found that at least three of the four pieces of footage used in this report are scenes of old incidents from protests that occurred at various times in France.
A video report was posted from Dhaka Tribune’s page on October 5. The post read, “France ablaze with student p/rotests, 500 schools c/losed.” Four video footages can be seen being used in the report.
First two pieces of footage are from a 2022 protest
Conducting a reverse image search to verify the source of the first footage yields a fact check report by the European news outlet Euronews. It stated that the footage depicts a scene from the aftermath of a fatal shooting against Paris’ Kurdish community in December 2022.
Furthermore, a fact-check report published on October 4, 2026, by the fact-checking organization MISBAR was found. In that report as well, the footage is referred to as an incident of clashes between police and members of the Kurdish community in Paris in 2022.
In the second footage, a scene of vandalism at a bus stand can be seen. Conducting a reverse image search using key frames yields a video report published by the Turkish news outlet Yeni Safak on December 25, 2022. The footage in this report exactly matches the video published in Dhaka Tribune. The report stated that supporters of the “terrorist” organization PKK carried out acts of violence in protest of the deaths of three people in an armed attack in Paris, the capital of France.
Additionally, the reports by Euronews and MISBAR also mentioned the second footage as a scene from 2022.
Therefore, the two pieces of footage used in the first 28 seconds of the video report published in Dhaka Tribune are scenes of an incident more than three and a half years old.
When this video was previously circulated with a false claim, Dismislab published a fact-check report.
An incident from 2023 is seen in the fourth footage
A reverse image search was conducted taking keyframes from the footage used from 29 seconds to 33 seconds of the video report. This yields a report published in the French local news outlet Midi Libre on January 13, 2023. According to the report, this is an incident of a school bus catching fire in France.
That is, the footage is also more than three years old, and it has no connection to the currently ongoing movement.
However, although it could not be confirmed exactly which incident the scene in the report’s third footage (from 37 seconds to 57 seconds) belongs to, multiple sources (1, 2) have cited it as a video of the ongoing movement.
Incidentally, a major movement led by high school students has spread across France since the last week of last September. Although it initially began with protests and blockades of school entrances at a few schools in the Paris region, within a few days it has spread to various regions of the country.
Journalistic rules on using old and different event videos
The BBC’s guidelines state that old or archive material can be used. However, it must not be used in a way that creates a misleading impression for the audience regarding an event, situation, or the subject shown in the footage.
Regarding the use of footage from a completely different event to depict a current event, more specific BBC guidelines state that archive footage of one event should not be used to show another event in a manner that makes the audience think they are watching scenes of the latter event.
That is, using old videos is not the primary problem. The context in which it is being used and what impression the style of presentation gives the audience about the event in that video—that is what is important. Even if an old footage is explicitly marked as an archive, if it is presented as a scene of a completely different event, then merely applying the label ‘old footage’ or ‘file footage’ does not eliminate the risk of confusion.
