The BBC did use old footage of Boris Johnson laying a Remembrance Wreath

11 November 2019
What was claimed

The BBC used old footage of Boris Johnson laying a Remembrance wreath.

Our verdict

Correct, in 2019 it twice used footage from the 2016 Remembrance Sunday service.

A post claiming that BBC Breakfast used old footage of Boris Johnson at a Remembrance Sunday service has been shared thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter.

This is true, the BBC twice used footage from the 2016 service instead of 2019 during the morning broadcast on the 11 November 2019, when discussing the election policies related to the armed forces which  Labour and the Conservatives announced that day.

Mr Johnson, who in 2016 was Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, laid a green wreath on behalf of overseas territories. This year as Prime Minister, he laid a wreath of red poppies.

In later news bulletins throughout the morning, the BBC used footage from the 2019 service.

The BBC said the use of 2016 footage was a production error and the organisation apologised.

This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as true because the BBC did use old footage.

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