I think people need to understand that if you shoot some video footage on your Iphone and have iCloud storage and sharing, then that footage can be retrievable immediately in multiple ways , regardless of whether the phone itself is found or not, or regardless of what condition it's in.
We don't need to blame a shady member of the search teams or investigative crew as having 'stolen' a phone from the site of the crash, nor should we be imagining a shifty villager from Vernet selling a memory card to Paris Match.
It's quite possible the video images were accessed/recuperatd via a victims home or office computer. This recuperation may have occurred
a) by a spouse or family or colleague
b) by a shifty computer hacker who works for Paris Match who has penetrated into the iCloud account of a victim
The Police may be quite correct in saying that they have no knowledge of the images.
What is awful is that theses images have not been delivered to the investigative authorities, or so it seems.