“Titanic Sinking; No Lives Lost” and Other Terribly Inaccurate News Reports from April 15, 1912

Over at the Retro­naut they’ve high­light­ed some ear­ly, over­ly-opti­mistic news­pa­per reports that came out after the Titan­ic sank in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912. The World report­ed “Titan­ic Sink­ing; No Lives Lost.”  The Van­cou­ver Dai­ly Province declared “The Titan­ic Sink­ing, But Prob­a­bly No Lives Lost.” Mean­while, The New York Times got clos­er to the truth with its lengthy head­line: “Titan­ic Sinks Four Hours After Hit­ting Ice­berg; 866 Res­cued By Carpathia, Prob­a­bly 1,250 Per­ish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Not­ed Names Miss­ing.” The real death toll climbed to 1,514. Last year, on the 100th anniver­sary of the mar­itime tragedy, Christo­pher Sul­li­van, an edi­tor at the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, researched the sto­ry and tried to explain how news­pa­pers fell so short of the mark. Speak­ing to the web site Journalism.co.uk he gave this expla­na­tion:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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