Erroneous BBC tweets about queen’s health cause panic
The news organization stated that the messages were sent during ‘a technical rehearsal for an obituary.’ Other news sources that picked up the stories had to issue retractions, too.
Misstatements and untruths spread fast on social media. The organization that offered the latest example of that Wednesday morning was none other than the BBC.
BBC reporter Ahmen Khawaja tweeted that Queen Elizabeth II was undergoing treatment at a hospital, and then tweeted that the queen had died, leading several news organizations and other Twitter users to parrot her message.
CNN just tweeted, then deleted report Queen Elizabeth has been hospitalized pic.twitter.com/9Ox0uIhJge
— Jon Passantino (@passantino) June 3, 2015
Khawaja’s tweets quickly came down, too. After she deleted them, she tweeted this:
False Alarm: Have deleted previous tweets!!
— Ahmen Khawaja (@AhmenKhawaja) June 3, 2015
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