Titanic mistake
By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Aug 11th, 2007 • Category: Broadcasting, Journalism, News Agencies, NewspapersHow embarrassing! It took a 13-year-old Finish boy looking at a newspaper to realise that pictures used to illustrate the story of Russian mini-subs laying claim to part of the Arctic seabed were actually from the film Titanic.
The boy, Waltteri Seretin, contacted the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat to point this out what picture desks around the world had failed to spot. Another Finish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, in English, reported:
The footage used by Reuters was supplied by the Russian television channel RTR, and apparently no claim was made in the original Russian news bulletin to suggest the pictures showed the two manned mini-subs beneath the North Pole. Indeed at the time of the original broadcast, the vessels and their crews were known to be still some hours away from their destination. However, a viewer could conceivably assume that the computer animations, the footage of ships on the surface at the North Pole, and the underwater scenes were all part of the same continuum. In its piece on the subject, two of the four Reuters pictures were from the Titanic filming.
The Finish-made Russian subs that were used to stake the territorial claim were also used in Titanic.
Anyone who speaks Russian will find it easier than I do to judge the Russian TV report. Reuters used pictures from the TV station in its report and a caption with one of the Titanic shots reads: “Russian miniature submarines are seen under water in the Arctic Ocean in this Reuters Television image taken from a television broadcast, August 2, 2007.”
Reuters has admitted that it “mistakenly identified this file footage as originating from the Arctic, and not the North Atlantic where the footage was shot”.
The Guardian on August 3 compounded the error by captioning one of the pictures as: “Mir mini-submarine under the Polar ice cap yesterday.” Reuters had only said when it was broadcast.
Yesterday Media Guardian posted a story about the Reuters admission and said that the pictures had been used by the Guardian and Guardian Unlimited.
Surprise then that the story in the Guardian today is about an apparent attempt to “sex up” a news story by a Russian state TV station. There is no reference to either Reuters or the Guardian’s use of the pictures. It is worth comparing these two stories from the Guardian stable.
Andrew Grant-Adamson is Andrew Grant-Adamson is a journalist who now teaches a new generation of writers, subs and editors at the University of Westminster.
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de um vÃdeo mostrado por uma TV russa, numa reportagem sobre o feito. Acontece que a TV russa não afirmou que as imagens eram dos submarinos russos, mas apenas uma “ilustração”. Como o pessoal de plantão na Reuters não entendia russo… Via WorldBlog. marcos palacios
on a Feeling’ teweeg heeft gebracht? Heel de balans tussen realiteit en fictie is vervormd, wat afgelopen week nog maar eens pijnlijk duidelijk werd in de Noordpoolsaga, met het gebruik van beelden uit ‘Titanic’ (hiervoor verwijs ik u graag naar http://www.wordblog.co.uk/2007/08/11/titanic-mistake). Zou de maatschappij er niet helemaal anders uitzien, ja, zelfs beter? Zouden wij persoonlijk niet meer tijd vrij maken voor het lezen van Flaubert of Joyce? En waren we, ook op cinematisch gebied, zoveel slechter af v
[...] Titanic Mistake Images presented by the Reuters news agency last Thursday, purporting to show two submersibles during a recent Russian scientific expedition to the sea bed 4.3 kilometres below the Geographic North Pole, have been shown to be something else entirely. The pictures were actually taken from when the submersibles were employed on location filming in the North Atlantic for James Cameron’s blockbuster movie Titanic. The Guardian then tried to cover-up the fact that they, along with the rest of the world’s media, failed to notice this. [...]
[...] the television news are keen to show sangré whenever they can, they like to sensationalise, … Titanic mistake http://www.wordblog.co.uk/2007/08/11/titanic-mistake/ The footage used by Reuters was supplied by [...]
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