Fake CNN Screenshot Shared To Claim OceanGate’s Titan Submersible 'Found Empty'

The screenshot of the CNN article in the viral claim about OceanGate's TItan submersible is fabricated.

A screenshot of a news report about OceanGate Expeditions' Titan submersible which went missing on 18 June, purportedly published by CNN, is being shared on social media platforms.

The claim: According to the screenshot, CNN published an article claiming that OceanGate Expeditions’ Titan submersible was found empty. 

• It quotes Wendy Rush, wife of OceanGate’s CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush, saying that the submarine’s door was “bolted from the outside,” making it impossible for people to leave the vessel.

• It was “almost as if they vanished,” it quotes Rush as saying.

(Archives of more claims can be seen here, here and here.)

Is it true?: No. Neither did CNN publish this article, nor did Wendy Rush issue any statement of this kind.

• As per the latest reports, only parts of the Titan submersible have been found as debris near the Titanic’s wreckage. 

How did we find out?: We looked for reports about the sunk submersible on CNN’s website, where we saw recent articles but not the one seen in the claim.

• Next, we checked archived versions of CNN’s website to see whether the article was published and later taken down, but did not find any evidence to support this.

Who is Wendy Rush?: We looked up Wendy Rush’s name and come across a search result on LinkedIn which listed Rush as the ‘Director of Communications and Expedition Team Member’ at OceanGate.

• The page has now been deleted. 

• OceanGate’s website has been unavailable since the mishap. To check whether Rush was the co-founder of OceanGate, we looked for news reports mentioning her name.

• While we found no reports identifying her as the co-founder, we came across several reports which mentioned that Rush had descended from a couple who had lost their lives on the RMS Titanic.

As per a Sky News report, OceanGate was co-founded by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Sohnlein.

We found several other news reports – like these by the BBC and ABC News – which identified Sohnlein as the company’s co-founder, not Wendy Rush.

Has the submersible been found empty?: We found no credible reports to support the claim that the Titan submersible had been found empty with a deadbolt on its door.

• The US Coast Guard found debris resembling the Titan’s design 500 meters away from the Titanic’s wreckage.

• The submersible is believed to have undergone a ‘catastrophic implosion,’ which killed all five on board instantly.

The photograph in the claim is not of the Titan submersible, but that of Cyclops 1, another submersible by OceanGate which was previously used for research and diving training.

Conclusion: A fabricated screenshot is being shared as an article by CNN, which claims that no survivors had been found on OceanGate’s Titan submersible

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