Posted on 07/13/2007 8:25:23 PM PDT by neverdem
The papers this morning were full of the revelation in a BBC documentary that the Queen had had a hissy fit and stormed out of a photo-shoot with the photographer Annie Leibowitz. As the Times reported:
The Queen offered a rare, public display of displeasure when she sat for Leibovitz, who is famed for her Vanity Fair photographs of stars such as a pregnant Demi Moore in the nude. A camera crew was invited to film the encounter for a fly-on-the-wall BBC One series, A Year with the Queen, made by the production company behind Wife Swap. The portrait was to commemorate the Queen’s spring visit to the United States.
Leibovitz selected the white drawing room at Buckingham Palace. The Queen arrived in white fur stole, gold-embroidered evening dress, Order of the Garter robes and diamond tiara, as requested. But Leibovitz, a perfectionist who once persuaded Whoopi Goldberg to pose in a bath of milk, had a change of heart. 'I think it will look better without the crown,' the film shows her informing the Queen. 'Less dressy. The garter robe is so...extraordinary.' 'Less dressy?' the Queen says in response to this display of lese-majeste. 'What do you think this is?' The Queen is then shown walking angrily from the drawing room. 'I'm not changing anything,' she fumes at a flunky. 'I've had enough of dressing like this, thank you very much.'
In the context of royal etiquette and the character of the Queen herself, this was quite sensational. The Queen has never been known to storm out of any engagement. Ever. But now we learn that that this did not happen. She did not storm out of the photoshoot at all. The footage was actually filmed as the Queen made her way into the sitting - and she made her irritated comments to her lady-in-waiting before the shoot had even started. The BBC had falsified the sequence of events - at least in the video trailer it made available to the press - to make a better story.
It has now issued a grovelling apology, saying that
the actual sequence of events was misrepresented.
The BBC's trustees have asked the Director General Mark Thompson to explain what the hell went on here. Small wonder.The significance of this can scarcely be exaggerated. The BBC has a world-wide reputation for integrity and truth-telling. Suddenly it is revealed to be deliberately manipulating its images to dupe the public. At a stroke, the trust it engenders has been shattered. And over the Queen, of all people!
If it transposes a picture sequence like this to sex up a story about the Queen by transmitting an outright falsehood, just think what it is doing in the Middle East.
Article printed from Melanie Phillips’s Diary: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary
URL to article: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1586
Click here to print.
My first thought — BBC = Bad Boy Clinton
No not really, at least not outside of the liberal echo chamber.
Not to defend the BBC, but at least they apologized and did so quickly. Contrast that with how CBS handled the fake Guard documents. It would seem the Brits don’t have it quite as bad as us when it comes to the media. But perhaps it being the Queen and all, they had little choice in the matter, but to come clean.
Oh no?
Then you are probably unaware that one Royal Navy Ship's crew, while on duty in the Middle East, BANNED the showing on board of the BBC news coverage of Iraq because of the blatant bias.
Good point. Still, I'm never comfortable by the media's ever present ability to lie and present a facade of reality. These folks have too much power. I don't have an alternative to the current situation, and I sure wouldn't leave to government to regulate it. Vigilance is the only answer...eternal vigilance...
Yeah I realize this incident is a small glimpse of the bigger picture. We’re probably equally screwed when it comes to the media.
Business as usual at the BBC. They distorts facts/slants news/and lies all the time...in matters of great substance. Why should the queen expect to be treated differently?
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