Why did BBC journalist kill off Queen on Twitter?
BBC journalist Ahmen Khawaja is facing disciplinary action over a tweet that announced the death of Queen Elizabeth.
“Queen Elizabrth (sic) has died,” said the tweet published on the journalist’s account on Wednesday, misspelling the queen’s name.
She later removed the original tweet, calling it a “false alarm.”
Khawaja (pictured below) had previously tweeted about the queen being treated in hospital. To add to the confusion, the queen was really attending hospital for an annual medical checkup.
Just a silly prank?
Khawaja said in a later tweet that she had left her phone “unattended at home” and called the death announcement a “silly prank”, which contradicted the official version of the story by the state-funded British Broadcasting Corporation itself. She noted the mistake was made during a “category-one obituary rehearsal” for the queen.
“During a technical rehearsal for an obituary, tweets were mistakenly sent from the account of a BBC journalist saying that a member of the royal family had been taken ill,” a spokesperson said. “The tweets were swiftly deleted and we apologize for any offense.”
The Daily Telegraph quoted BBC insiders as saying that Khawaja was not even part of the rehearsal and “appeared to have overheard the rehearsal and tweeted what she thought was breaking news.”
As the complications remained, reports said the BBC was conducting an investigation into the matter and the journalist could face disciplinary action.
Meanwhile, British media outlets appeared to be covering up for the gaffe in their reports with The Guardian releasing similar inaccurate death reports in history in a story titled “BBC's 'Queen hospitalized' gaffe” rather than a “queen death” one.
NT/AS/MHB
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