Jugantor’s Indonesia earthquake report features old, unrelated footage
A video report on the recent earthquake in Indonesia was published by the news outlet Daily Jugantor. The report used multiple scenes that were either footage of an earthquake in another country or older footage of an earthquake in Indonesia. However, none of these scenes were identified as old or file footage.
On Saturday morning, August 15, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck Indonesia’s Flores Island. On the same day, Daily Jugantor’s official page published a 1-minute-and-16-second video. The report’s caption said, “Devastating earthquake in Indonesia, 2 dead”. The same video was also uploaded to the news outlet’s YouTube channel. Throughout the video, multiple pieces of footage appear sequentially.
At the beginning of the video, several children can be seen in a scene showing an earthquake. A reverse image search found that this footage had been published in a report by the France-based media outlet Euronews two months ago. That report identified the scene as footage of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck the Philippines on June 8, 2026.
In the second piece of footage in Jugantor’s video, a scene captured by a CCTV camera can be seen. A reverse image search found that this, too, was an old video. The same scene appears in a video report published on the official Facebook page of Prothom Alo on September 19, 2025. Prothom Alo identified the footage as showing the magnitude 6.6 earthquake that struck Indonesia’s Central Papua province.
At the 20-second mark of Jugantor’s video, another scene of an earthquake appears. A search for the source led to the same scene in a report published four months earlier by the Turkish media outlet Yeni Şafak. According to the report, the footage shows the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck Indonesia’s North Maluku on April 2 this year. This, too, is footage of an earlier earthquake.
A reverse image search of a keyframe taken from the 26-second mark of Jugantor’s report led to a four-month-old YouTube video of the magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Indonesia. An older report by the Associated Press (AP) on the same incident was also found. The video attached to that report shows damaged buildings, and the buildings in those scenes match those in the footage used in Jugantor’s report. This footage has no connection to the earthquake that occurred on August 15.
At the 42-second mark of Jugantor’s video, a scene showing turbulent waves can be seen. Dismislab’s verification found that the video is not from Indonesia, but from China. A video report published by India-based media outlet NDTV World was found. Published on July 12 this year, the report showed footage of Typhoon Bavi, which struck China’s Zhejiang province. The footage used during the first 18 seconds of the NDTV report matches the footage used between the 42- and 47-second marks of Jugantor’s video. Although it could not be independently verified whether the video is from China, it was confirmed that the footage is not from Indonesia’s recent earthquake.
At the one-minute-eight-second mark of the video, a scene inside a room can be seen. A reverse image search found that this, too, is footage of the earthquake that occurred in Indonesia last April, not the one on August 15. A report published on April 2 by Indonesia-based media outlet Berita Nasional included a still image from the incident. The caption identified it as a scene inside a church. In other words, this is also footage of an earlier earthquake.
Although the scenes mentioned above are unrelated to the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Indonesia on August 15, they were used without any labeling.
Recommendations for properly labeling old photos or videos
Trusting News, in its guidelines, says that appropriate labels should be added when archival or file footage is used in a news report. The guidelines state, “Readers/viewers need to know that what they are seeing was not captured as part of the news event. At the same time, it is important to mention the date and location.”
It also recommends adding captions to videos or photos. In this regard, even when the connection between the visual and the news story is very clear, an explanation may sometimes be necessary for viewers. In addition, the source of the visual should be identified. If a visual was taken from social media, that should also be mentioned.
