Off With Their Heads!

[Yonivore]

The BBC issued a humiliating apology this afternoon after its promotional video of an upcoming do entary falsely portrayed Queen Elizabeth II as walking out on a photo shoot. The editing strongly suggested that the monarch stormed out of a session with Annie Leibovitz after a disagreement -- but it turns out that the footage was from her entrance, not exit:

The British Broadcasting Corp. apologized to Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday for saying she had walked out of portrait sitting with photographer Annie Leibovitz.

The BBC said a promotional trailer released Wednesday from the upcoming do entary, "A Year With the Queen," showed the monarch arriving, not departing.

That scene showed the queen walking down a Buckingham Palace corridor, wearing a crown and her Order of the Garter robes, and telling her lady-in-waiting: "I'm not changing anything. I've had enough dressing like this, thank you very much."

The Beeb blamed the error on the production company's editors. They also blamed the technicians in the broadcast booth for running the ad. They also blamed the producers for giving the footage back to the BBC. If we wait a couple of more days, the BBC will find a way to blame George Bush and the neocon cabal.

Of course, this does wonders for the credibility of the BBC. They've been using this promotional material to excite viewers about the new do entary, even getting a prominent space on Drudge for a couple of days. How many people will believe anything in it now, if the producers managed to put together sequences so out of context as to tell an outright lie?

Of course, we're used to such manipulations from the American Media so, no big whoop.

And the best part of this is that the British government forces the Queen's subjects to subsidize this kind of performance. There's more than just a little irony there. Ah, yes, the impartiality, equity, and balance of publicly funded media.

I guess it could be worse for them. If this had happened a couple of centuries earlier, it wouldn't have been the Queen losing her head over it.

[PixelPusher]

The Beeb blamed the error on the production company's editors. They also blamed the technicians in the broadcast booth for running the ad. They also blamed the producers for giving the footage back to the BBC.

All excuses pioneered by the Fox News Channel. They really are a bad influence on the rest of the news media. CNN continues to mutilate itself by trying to emulate Fox News.