One of America’s leading news anchors attracted ridicule on Monday by announcing that he had arrived to cover the Cop26 summit – from the wrong city.

Wolf Blitzer, a stalwart of CNN for more than three decades, posted a picture of himself sitting in the network’s studio on the first day of the climate summit.

It was, to the untrained eye, a plum spot for broadcasting, with arguably Scotland’s best-known landmark nestled in the background. Blitzer wrote on Twitter: “I’m now reporting from Edinburgh in Scotland, where 20,000 world leaders and delegates have gathered for the Cop26 climate summit.”

Unfortunately, however, Edinburgh Castle and the CNN studio are a good 40 miles from the location of the summit in Glasgow – a mix-up few residents of either city would be quick to forgive. 

CNN doubled down on the discrepancy throughout its coverage on Monday by intermittently cutting to a presenter in Edinburgh alongside a caption reading: “Glasgow, Scotland.”

Blitzer was quickly inundated by mocking tweets, including annotated maps of Scotland and quips such as “fake views”.

It is understood CNN chose to base itself in Edinburgh because that it is where Air Force One landed, carrying Joe Biden, the US president, who will also be staying in the city.

The media’s pool of travelling reporters who cover the White House will be based in Edinburgh. CNN will have several cameras at locations in Glasgow to feed into the coverage.

Within hours of his first tweet on Monday, Blitzer posted another update containing an attempt to contextualise his base of operations.

It said: “Coming up, we’ll have live coverage of President Biden’s remarks at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Air Force One landed in Edinburgh and Biden made the drive to Glasgow where he was greeted by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and UN Secretary General António Guterres.”