Yes, it's about that permission. It's not even that recent, it has been implemented since Android 10. I think it's summarized quite well here [0]:

If your app targets Android 10 (API level 29) or higher and needs to retrieve unredacted EXIF metadata from photos, you need to declare the ACCESS_MEDIA_LOCATION permission in your app's manifest, then request this permission at runtime.

So if the app-developer didn't take explicit effort to request this data (and the user-permission for it), his app will not receive it.

[0] https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/m...