BBC probes tweet gaffe in royal obituary rehearsal

The BBC apologised yesterday after sparking internet rumours that the Queen was dead. The rumours were started by a tweet from one of its journalists saying that the Queen was being treated in hospital.

However, the corporation’s embarrassment was compounded when initially it denied – wrongly – that the journalist had sent out a tweet saying the Queen was dead.

However, the journalist responsible did send out a tweet saying: ‘‘Queen Elizabeth has died.’’

It was deleted so swiftly that few people picked it up. The tweets were prompted by a technical rehearsal for the broadcaster’s future coverage of the Queen’s death.

However, in an apparent coincidence that compounded the embarrassment at the BBC, it emerged soon afterwards that the Queen really had been in hospital for a routine check-up.

The messages were posted on Twitter from the account of Ahmen Khawaja, a BBC journalist who will now face disciplinary proceedings.

One tweet said: ‘‘Breaking: Queen Elizabeth is being treated at King Edward VII Hospital in London. Statement due shortly.’’

That tweet was swiftly picked up and repeated by other news organisations, including CNN and Germany’s Bild newspaper.

Khawaja, a multimedia journalist for the BBC’s Urdu service, later deleted the tweets, apologising for what she described as a ‘‘false alarm’’ and giving the impression that the message had been sent by someone else.

She tweeted: ‘‘Phone left unattended at home. Silly prank. Apologies for upsetting anyone!’’

However, BBC sources suggest that Khawaja sent out the tweets because she believed the rehearsal was real.

When asked if Khawaja had also sent a tweet saying the Queen was dead, a BBC spokeswoman said: ‘‘As far as I am aware there was no tweet saying that the Queen was dead.’’

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: ‘‘I can confirm that the Queen this morning attended her annual medical check-up at the King Edward VII’s Hospital in London. This was a routine, prescheduled appointment. The Queen has now left hospital.’’

The BBC apologised for the tweet, which it said had been posted in error.

It said in a statement: ‘‘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. The tweets were swiftly deleted and we apologise for any offence.’’

The BBC regularly conducts technical rehearsals for the death of a member of the royal family. Access to the rehearsals is tightly controlled, to ensure that mistakes do not happen.

A BBC insider refused to discuss the chain of events, but said: ‘‘It was just a terrible coincidence.’’

The other unanswered question is why Khawaja, who is not thought to have had anything to do with the technical rehearsal, got hold of the information that prompted her tweet – and believed it to be real.

The journalist, a media student until 2013, joined the BBC in April 2014. The BBC said: ‘‘We have nothing further to add at this stage.’’

Ahmen Khawaja