The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Buckingham Palace The Sun Media

Buckingham Palace gathering spurs the Sun to wrongly publish Prince Philip death story

Author

By John McCarthy | Opinion Editor

May 4, 2017 | 5 min read

The Queen has called an all staff meeting in Buckingham Palace and across her residences today (4 May) which sparking numerous wild rumours online. This was not helped by the fact the Sun accidentally published an article claiming that Prince Phillip had passed away at the age of 95.

The Sun

The Sun's headlines

The newspaper briefly rolled out a holding piece headlined ‘Prince Philip dead at 95, how did the Duke of Edinburgh die, etc etc’ hours after the announcement as speculation of the prince’s health began to circulate on social media.

To date, the purpose of the meeting has yet to be announced, although BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt has underlined that there is “no cause for regarding the health of either the Queen or Prince Philip”.

The Sun unpublished the story after it was noticed, live for several minutes a spokesperson from the Sun tells The Drum. The story, although briefly live, helped contribute to a state of misinformation. Despite all the excitement the announcement merely underlined that Prince Philip will no longer carry out public engagements.

Social media also played its part in building the hype around the announcement.

Buckingham Palace The Sun Media

More from Buckingham Palace

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +