Unavailable media should be clear without pretending to be complete. The useful question is not whether the idea sounds persuasive. It is whether it helps someone understand the work, make a decision, or complete a task with less friction.
What is happening
A decorative play button can imply that a video or recording exists when it does not. That creates friction at the exact moment someone tries to engage.
This tends to become visible at the boundary between the organization and the person encountering it for the first time. Internal familiarity hides effort that remains obvious to a customer, reader, applicant, or collaborator.
A practical response
Label the format, state, and expected experience. Disable controls that cannot work and keep the surrounding article useful on its own.
The aim is a smaller, clearer system: one source for the record, one visible hierarchy, and one next action that behaves as expected. That approach improves the immediate page and makes later application or database work easier to add without rebuilding the public surface.