Original article (in Serbian) was published on 20/09/2022
The Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II, died on September 8 at the age of 97. Following the official confirmation from Buckingham Palace, this became the central news of the British and world media. Yesterday, 11 days after her death, the Queen was buried with the highest honours, and the event was reported in detail in the local media. However, among the many pieces of information published these days about the Queen, a few untrue have sneaked into the media.
Big Ben did not chime to mark the start and end of the minute of silence
On Sunday evening, certain media from Serbia reported the news of the agency Tanjug, which, referring to the BBC, announced that “the largest clock tower in the world with a belfry, London’s Big Ben, marked the beginning of a minute of silence and then its end”. Although this information was actually published, and it still exists on the website of the British public service, at 9:01 p.m. Central European time, i.e., 8:01 p.m. British time, it was known that Big Ben did not mark the beginning and end of the national minute of silence on the death of the Queen, as planned. This can also be seen on a video made by Sky News television, which broadcast live a minute of silence in Great Britain.
A spokesman for the British Parliament said on Sunday that this case is being “investigated as a matter of urgency” and expressed his belief that Big Ben will chime during the Queen’s funeral on Monday, the Guardian reported. One of London’s most famous attractions actually chimed 96 times uninterrupted the following day in honour of the deceased Queen during her funeral ceremony.
The mistake about Big Ben chiming to mark the beginning and end of the minute of silence in Great Britain, except for Tanjug, was reported by Srbija danas, Bilten, B92, Novosti, NPortal, Blic, Glas srpske and RTV, while RTS changed its news, but the original error remained recorded on the Google search engine.
Objektiv missed the place of the Queen’s resting place and the year of her father’s death
Objektiv, in its today’s print edition, announced that yesterday the Queen’s coffin was lowered into the tomb, which is located “five meters below the floor of Westminster Abbey”. In the following text, Objektiv states that “Queen Elizabeth herself ordered the construction of this tomb when her father, King John VI, died in 1962, and she ascended the throne”. However, almost none of this is true.
The tomb that Objektiv writes about is actually the King George VI Memorial Chapel and is located under St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, not under the floor of Westminster Abbey, which is located about 36 kilometres away, in the centre of London. It is true that Queen Elizabeth II ordered the construction of this tomb, but not that it happened immediately after her father’s death. The construction of the tomb mentioned above began in 1962, but King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II, died almost ten years earlier, in 1952. Until 1969, when the construction of the tomb that Objektiv writes about was completed, King George rested in another part of the Chapel of St. George in Windsor.
