A video claiming to show what happened to the Titan submersible, including an audio recording of the final words of its passengers, was uploaded by a Facebook (FB) page. This is not true.
The United States Coast Guard, which announced last week that the Titan suffered a “catastrophic implosion”, has not released any audio or video footage of the vessel that was on its way to the wreckage of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean last June 18 when it lost contact with its mother ship.
On June 23, an FB page published the video now circulating among Filipinos. A part of its caption read:
“Breaking news. All five people onboard on Submersible are all very sadly died (sic), OceanGate confirms. This video shows how the accident happened with the submarine.
The final words heard [from] inside the Titanic Submarine have been released.”
But when the video is played, instead of the supposed voices of the ill-fated passengers, a man’s voice is heard talking indecently.
An online search confirmed the audio recording in the published FB post was not actually recorded during the final moments of the Titan.
Although the original YouTube video has since been taken down, a transcript of a March 2020 Reddit thread shows it was a graphic voice message accidentally sent by someone to a friend. Another copy of the video uploaded with a different title is still up on YouTube.
In a June 23 press briefing, Rear Adm. John Mauger of the USasa Coast Guard said they were able to retrieve pieces of the submersible near the wreck of the Titanic on the seafloor. There was no mention of any audio recording recovered from the debris. Neither was there mention of any clip that showed the implosion.
The video emerged a day after OceanGate Expeditions, the enterprise which operated the Titan, confirmed the death of the five people onboard the submersible, concluding the five-day- long rescue efforts. The company’s CEO was among the fatalities.
The erroneous video garnered over 60 comments, 200 shares and 259,000 recent views, according to FB.
VERA Files Fact Check debunked a similar post on the Titan earlier this week (READ: Viral audio clip of Titan submersible victims’ ‘final moments’ are FALSE.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
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