Old video of journalist attacked in New York falsely linked to Bangladesh unrest
- Published on August 21, 2024 at 09:18
- 3 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
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"Look at the situation of journalists in Bangladesh. Those Bangla brothers who claim there's no press freedom in India must watch this," read a Hindi language post shared on social media site X on August 7, 2024.
It included a seven-second video showing a television reporter being hit by several men wearing facemasks.
More than 450 people were killed -- many due to police fire -- during a month of student-led protests against Hasina before she quit as prime minister and fled to India on August 5.
Reporters Without Borders has reported 250 journalists were injured during in the protests while five were killed, according to an AFP tally (archived link).
The interim government replacing Hasina, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, has invited UN investigators to probe the violent "atrocities" that accompanied her ousting.
The video was also shared alongside similar false claims elsewhere on X and on Facebook here and here.
Video from New York
The logo of Bangladeshi television channel "SOMOY TV" can be seen in the bottom right portion of the circulating video.
A keyword search on Google found the clip featured in a news report uploaded on the verified YouTube channel of Somoy TV on June 2, 2020 (archived link).
In the Bangla-language report, Somoy TV correspondent Hasanuzzaman Saki discussed how he was attacked on air by several masked men while covering the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in New York.
In mid-2020 much of the United States was swept by protests over law enforcement mistreatment of African Americans in the wake of the police murder of Black man George Floyd in Minneapolis.
"I was covering protests in Times Square, New York and I saw many people on the street at that time. Some protesters attacked me," he said in the report.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the circulating video (left) and the Somoy TV news report from 2020 (right):
The US Press Freedom Tracker, an organisation that documents attacks against journalists in the United States, reported the incident on June 1, 2020 (archived link).
The attack was also reported by several media outlets here and here (archived links here and here).
AFP confirmed the location of the incident by searching on Google Maps for a shop called "Angelina" that is shown in the circulating video.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video (left) and the Google Maps street view of its corresponding location (right) with similar elements highlighted by AFP:
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