By James Macintyre
Published: 11 August 2007
Footage purporting to show Russian explorers claiming the seafloor beneath the North Pole was in fact a scene from the 1997 film, Titanic.
The Russians symbolically planted their flag below the surface nine days ago. The Independent led its Friday edition with the story, but did not use the Reuters images, now known to be misleading. However a number of media outlets around the world accompanied their coverage with the pictures, from the film starring Kate Winslett and Leonardo DiCaprio.
In fact the footage showed two Finnish-made Mir submersibles, filmed for sequences showing the search for the wreckage of the Titanic in James Cameron's blockbuster about the 1912 disaster.
It took a 13-year-old Finnish boy to call a local newspaper pointing out that the footage looked identical to that in the film.
Reuters said the footage came from the Russian television channel RTR, which used the images as "archive pictures" hours before the expedition was complete. In a statement, Reuters said: "This location error was corrected as soon as it was brought to our attention ... The caption has been corrected."
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